


Something I Need

by ishipitsobad



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Depression, Fem!Hanji - Freeform, Fluff, Hell, Homophobia, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Medical Inaccuracies, Pancreatic cancer, Smut, Trigger Warnings, devil!Jean, where I'm headed when this is done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-05 13:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1820272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishipitsobad/pseuds/ishipitsobad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco Bodt is a lonely, friendless young man with a dead-end job and a miserable outlook on life. Desperate for company that will tolerate him for the rest of his short life, he does the unthinkable: he sells his soul to the Devil, in exchange for his friendship.</p><p>Assuming the human identity of Jean Kirschstein, the Devil agrees to make the deal until the end of Marco's life for the simple reason that he foresees it will be a short one. But as the days elapsed, he grows unbearably fond of this human, and can't bring himself to damn Marco's soul into the torturous realms of Hell. So he commits an act that puts both Heaven and Hell in an uproar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's A Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco Bodt is a lonely, friendless young man with a dead-end job and a miserable outlook on life. Desperate for company that will tolerate him for the rest of his short life, he does the unthinkable: he sells his soul to the Devil, in exchange for his friendship.
> 
> Assuming the human identity of Jean Kirschstein, the Devil agrees to make the deal until the end of Marco's life for the simple reason that he foresees it will be a short one. But as the days elapsed, he grows unbearably fond of this human, and can't bring himself to damn Marco's soul into the torturous realms of Hell. So he commits an act that puts both Heaven and Hell in an uproar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got the idea for this fic from phantomrose96! Asked their permission to use it but never got a response... if they're against it, I'll take it down.

You'd think that after twenty-five years of being lonely and an outcast, one would be used to the pain and desolation.

Marco Bodt could compartmentalise the misery, but that didn't make it sting any less. He could endure being a scorned high-school dropout, the whispered disdain at family gatherings where his invitation was only given out of courtesy rather than love, the dead-end job as a sales assistant at a CD shop. He could tolerate the pest-ridden, dingy shoebox of a rented apartment, and the neighbours that were either playing deafening music that made the floor shake under his feet, or having porn video-worthy sex that echoed into his bedroom. He had to learn, been forced to learn, to cope with the adversity and deprivation.

But the final straw that broke his back was this moment, here and now in the hospital office of a doctor whose specialisation he could barely pronounce.  

  "You have Stage IV pancreatic cancer," Dr. Zoë sounded uncharacteristically cheerful for someone announcing a death sentence. "I'm afraid treatment at this point would be ineffectual and a big waste of not only what little time you do have left, but your money as well."

Marco didn't, couldn't speak. How do you respond to that? Especially when you hear what wretched remnants of your life crumbling to dust? This was the prognosis of all that nausea, the inexplicable weight loss, the faint jaundiced look that lasted weeks, and  the abdominal pains that medications for gastritis and diarrhoea couldn't cure: a death sentence.

You can't. His mind was a slate wiped a sombre blank, and he couldn't hear the doctor's-- _oncologist_ , said the little nameplate on her desk--spiel about how the cancer had spread through his blood vessels and lymph nodes to his lungs and liver. How it was beyond any medical ministrations, and her oddly ebullient condolences, would he like to contact his next of kin with her office phone?

  "H-how... how long do I have?" Marco managed to ask when he recovered enough to find his voice, struggling at the back of his throat.

Mildly miffed at the interruption of her explanation of the astounding evolution of pancreatic cancer in his body, Dr. Zoë consulted her notes. "About three to five months. Like I said, next of kin?"

Marco thought about his parents. How they'd disowned and kicked him out of the house after he came out of the closet at seventeen and consistently denied that it was just a 'phase', deliberately ruining their matchmaking efforts that had lasted an impressively patient twelve weeks and four days. The looks of disgust, revulsion and ignominy on their faces when they realised that their eldest and only son was a 'fucking fag', and the shameful end of their bloodline. Denied of his inheritance, all financial and emotional support, he faced baseless discrimination from not only his family, but also the peers who once labelled themselves as his 'friends' once a upon a time.

  "No," Marco heroically suppressed the surge of sorrow, his voice wavering with the impending sobs that would come later in the meagre privacy of his apartment. "No next of kin. I'm alone."

* * *

_How desperate must someone be to have to resort to such far-fetched, bizarre ideas?_ Marco considered, still sniffling and red around the eyes. He chuckled, and it was not at all mirthful.  _Pretty damned desperate, I guess._

Having been isolated and cast out of 'decent society', Marco was not just forced to be alone. He was lonely. He had no one to turn to, no one to see him through to the last of his days. He had no lover to cry over his deathbed, to say a heartbreaking goodbye to. Why would there be? He had a build that could be tactfully described as 'stocky' but was more often referred to as 'chunky' or 'fat' (although in recent weeks, it had vanished and left him looking frightfully haggard), freckles that just generously scattered itself across his face like indelible dirt, and the emotional intelligence quotient of a used litter box.

He was going to die alone, depressed, and miserable in...

 _Three to five months._ Marco had resigned from his position at the CD shop that no one frequented now that music was easily (and illegally) downloadable on the Internet. He had no redundancy pay to speak of, and would have to live off his limited savings until... well, what use was there in worrying about money now? Not that he'd ever had much of it to begin with, anyway. He could barely keep up with the rental rates of his apartment and put food in the refrigerator, much less put anything in the piggy bank.  _I don't even have a bucket list to tick off. And what would I tick it off with, anyway? The cockroaches in my bathroom? There's_ _certainly more of them than there are dollars in my bank account._

So yes, he was legitimately desperate. The book, scavenged from a garage sale out of curiosity and the need to line his moulding bookshelf with something other than discarded CDs he'd snitched from his former place of employment, read 'Black Magic' in simple white lettering on a moth-eaten black leather-bound cover. It was covered in dust, and when he opened the book, the pages crackled not only with the sound of aged, yellowed paper, but also a faintly ominous feeling that warned the less-reckless to turn back now. 

  " 'How to Summon a Demon'," Marco read softly under his breath. He knew the necessary preparations for the 'spell', and had already purchased the blood of a lamb through the back door of a butcher's, and various other gory ingredients that would make a pious man scream in horror. Even if the 'spell' was just a hoax... well, Marco could add the disappointment to the bottom of a list that could go around the Earth twice. "Here goes nothing."

Since he was going to Hell for being gay, why not make the best of it before the eternal damnation of his soul?

He drew the circle with all the weirdly intricate details on the wooden floorboards of his hallway, ignoring the idea of having to scrub the blood out later so his landlady wouldn't be pissed (funny how she'd get mad over  _vandalism_ but not the earsplitting levels of his neighbour's nightly partying). He set the appropriate... props in the designated positions along the line of the circle, lighting up the candlewicks and with his heart pounding, began to read the incantations.

For the first couple of seconds, his heart sank lower and lower as nothing happened. 

Then it started. The flames began to flicker wildly, then exploded into columns of fire that charred the ceiling but didn't set it ablaze; the floorboards began to creak and groan as the foundations beneath Marco's feet shook like an earthquake was happening; a howling wind on par with a tornado's gale ripped the book from Marco's hands, but he continued to chant the very last line in the book.

With the utterance of the final word in the incantation, everything just... stopped. The fires were extinguished, the floorboards shut up, and the air was stagnant.

And there was someone standing in the midst of the circle, a man about Marco's age with a very bored expression but the lines of chagrin highlighting his incredibly, awe-inspiringly handsome features. His hair was ash-blond at the top, yet a darker brown where it was cropped closer to his scalp in an undercut. He had a hipshot stance, his arms folded across his chest and you could easily see the biceps flexing under the sleeves of his leather motorcycle jacket. He wore a white cotton V-neck tee and jeans that were fraying at the hem and knees. He looked like the kind of guy you'd see in a biker bar, the cadaverous lone-wolf you didn't want to pick a fight with, nursing a beer in a solitary corner as he brooded over his own troubles.

He looked absolutely nothing like--

  "If you were expecting a horned, red-skinned devil with a forked tail, the lower body of a goat and a three-pronged spear," the man snapped, looking more and more irate with every second passing that Marco was speechless. He had the faintest hint of a British accent, of all things. "You can bloody well forget about whatever deal you were planning on making. And for the love of-- really? Lamb's blood? You know, back in the day, I had people summoning me with the blood of  _virgins_ , not some harebrained animal's offspring. This is a fucking insult. You should be honoured that I even condescended to grace you with my presence."

And Marco laughed. He laughed the laughter of a madman, bound by a straitjacket and tossed inside the padded cell of a psych ward. He laughed so hard, fresh tears streamed down his face.   He laughed, for goodness knows what reason.

  "I'm sorry," Marco managed to apologise to the now highly-offended man. "I'm just a little... crazy, I suppose."

  "You must be," the man sniffed contemptuously, regarding the dismal state of his home. "What kind of rational being would want to live such vile conditions? Even for a meat sack, this could qualify for the first circle of Hell."

Marco blinked. "Meat sack?"

In answer to Marco's innocuous query, he received a denigratory sneer. "What else would you call your physical bodies? Anyway, get to the point, or I'll send for one of my lesser minions to finish you off. What do you want?"

  "I--"

  "Before you get to that," the strange man waved his hand, his striking pale amber eyes locked on something above Marco's head. "I cannot grant immortality or life extensions. The last thing I need is the Fates on my case."

  "The Fates?"

  " _He_ might measure your life line and decide  _how_ and  _when_ you go," the man was still looking at the air over Marco's head, and it was honestly discomfiting to be literally overlooked. "But it's the Fates who make sure no one tries to defy His will. They're sort of like... never mind. You get the idea: no messing with what time you have left on the clock. Now that that's settled, do you still want to make a deal?

Marco stared at him blankly. "It was never my intention to live a longer life. I'm a dead man walking anyway, so I figured I had nothing left to lose."

  "So what do you want?" the man said impatiently. "I don't have all bloody day, you know."

  "I want you to be my friend," Marco said without hesitation, feeling inordinately strong for someone who was at death's door. It was like his request was empowerment for him, surging through his weakened limbs and making him stand a little taller. "I want you to be my friend until the day I die, and for that, you can have my soul."

The man mulled it over, and his tawny eyes flickered from the space over Marco's head to something inside his chest. He stared at Marco's upper torso with such intensity, it felt like he was going to burn a hole right through it with his gaze alone. And the longer he looked, the more his eyes seemed to gleam with desire. Marco didn't know why he felt himself blushing. Perhaps it was because this was the longest anyone had ever looked at him without showing any signs of rejection or disdain.

Minutes passed without a word being spoken by either being, and Marco began to panic that his soul wasn't even worth such a deal.  _Oh, great. Now even the Devil doesn't want--_

  "So let me get this straight," the man never took his eyes off Marco's chest, his voice low with excitement thrumming through it like electricity. "You want me to be your friend-- just a  _friend_ \-- until you die, in exchange for your soul? You  _do_ realise how--"

  "Pathetic it sounds?" Marco finished, and he smiled weakly. "I do. Because that's what I am: pathetic?"

The man shook his head slowly, still not removing his gaze from whatever it was that he saw inside Marco's ribcage. "Not quite the words I was going to use, but that is all-- no, what you want?"

Marco nodded, still bemused. _What...?_

  "Then it's a deal."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a little hard to write for personal reasons, so I didn't illustrate on the summoning process.


	2. Minor Details

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that the Devil is his new friend/ally (albeit bought with his soul), Marco is feeling a little more... uplifted.

He seriously doubted that this mortal could be so naïve. There was  _no_ way a human, of all entities, could be so humble about his own self-worth. When he first felt the summoning, he'd half a mind to send one of the lesser demons to answer the call and relay the terms of the deal. But dispatching judged souls to their relevant circles of Hell got boring fast, and he figured since he had nothing else to do, why not? There was harmless fun in taunting and mocking a meat sack, scorning their pathetic state of desperation and sneering at their material, superficial desires. Such vacuous, dull-witted creatures... what were they worthy of? Certainly not the love and respect he'd been commanded to give them, eons ago when he still... 

He shook his head, dispelling the memory before it could fully surface. He'd come to learn that remembering a wonderful past in the midst of eternal punishment did more harm than good. So he focussed on the present, the human standing awkwardly in his presence: Marco Bodt, with his contract sealed in blood and an unbreakable covenant forevermore. The more he observed this mortal, the more he came to begrudgingly accept that yes, this Marco Bodt honestly did not understand how unfair a deal he'd made for himself. You'd think the Devil, Satan, the unholy fallen angel Lucifer would be the last to give appropriate judgement on what was fair and what wasn't; but he could. And this Marco human was really getting the short end of the stick.

The first thing he noticed when he arrived in this dismal excuse of an abode, was the remaining amount of time the summoner had left to live. Hanging over the heads of every mortal that walked the face of the earth was a countdown, varying in the length of time that was reduced by every second that passed. Of course, the meat sacks couldn't see it. But it was a ghostly clock that ticked away mercilessly, and could not be adjusted for whatever was offered in exchange. He had attempted to do so once, and suffered the repercussions. It was a painful memory, almost equivalent to the Fall. Almost, but not quite.

Marco Bodt had 13 weeks, 2 days, 7 hours and 5 minutes left to live when he first looked at the human's clock. And he looked like it: haggard, gaunt, slightly jaundiced and miserably aware of his painful fate. He wasn't sympathetic; it had been a very long time since he'd deigned to let himself feel human emotions. They had come up with words for every chemical reaction that took place in their brain.

Happiness. Sadness. Anger.

Love.

What a ridiculous sentiment. He scoffed, and listened to what this Marco wanted, even after laying down the ground rules. Then his gaze focussed on what he offered in exchange.

He fairly  _drooled_.

Inside Marco's chest, unseen by the human eye, was his soul: it was a silver orb suspended in darkness, glowing ever so softly and gently. It was like a full moon in starless night, hung over a still lake. Beautiful. Breathtaking. Incredible. Pure.

And ever so lonely.

He had never seen another soul quite like it. No, correction: in all his existence, he had never seen a soul so untainted by the hedonism of the world. It was magnificent... and melancholic.

To have a soul like that in his possession... oh, the gloating rights it offered. The treasure, the trophy, the prize above all prizes.

He couldn't have said yes any faster. After all, what had he to lose? This Marco only had less than 94 days to live. All he had to do was be a friend, right? Play nice, hang out, do whatever it is that meat sacks did as 'friends'. And he would get a soul which had a worth beyond all measure of value.

What could it hurt?

* * *

 

Marco shuffled his feet, unsure of what was supposed to happen now.

The man was still standing in the circle Marco had made, checking the contract and ensuring that no detail had escaped his sharp eye. The tip of his index finger still stung where he'd sliced the skin open with a blade, so the blood would flow like ink to sign the parchment on which the contract had been written. He pressed the wound against the hem of his shirt, and watched the man scan the contents of the contract.

Then he sighed, and the contract vanished.

  "Wait, what?" Marco was bewildered. "Does that mean the contract is off?"

  "No," the man's nose wrinkled. It was a very fine, straight nose. Marco couldn't help noticing that. "Of course not. I just filed it away. Once a contract is sealed in blood, it's indestructible. You could probably use it as a fucking shield against an RPG missile, and it wouldn't even crease."

Marco was relieved. "Oh. Right."

  "Now what?" he glanced derisively about his surroundings. He was reluctant to carry out his end of the deal, Marco realised. And why wouldn't he be? Marco was a desperate, pathetic, miserable wretch and a grossly ugly gay to boot. Who would want to be his friend?

  "D-do you have a name?" Marco found himself asking, voice shaking with trepidation.

The man seemed to seriously consider this, then shrugged. "You can call me Jean."

It was seemingly French in origin, and Marco managed not to say 'John'. "What about a surname?"

That threw him--Jean, and he pursed his lips. "Kirschstein, I suppose."

  "Why?"

  "What do you mean, why?" Jean Kirschstein, the human identity of the Devil, sounded thoroughly irate. "What's wrong with that name? I happen to like it."

  "No, as in: why that name specifically?" Marco was genuinely curious.

Startled by the innocent inquiry, Jean shrugged. "I just like it. No particular reason."

 _Okay... Jean Kirschstein it is._ Marco was at a loss of what to do or say now, and his rusty people skills weren't helping. "Do you want, I don't know, coffee or something?"

Jean's eyebrow, pencil thin and naturally arched like a rebel's, quirked up. "I'm starting to see why you asked for such an innocent contract. You might want to erase the salt circle so I can actually interact with you rather than just stand like a mannequin on display here."

Marco blushed, and quickly kicked a hole in the salt circle. Jean stepped out of it, and began to wander the dinky premises with a scowl Marco began to realise was his his perpetual expression in any given situation. The freckled man assumed it had something to do with an eternal existence confined to Hell and ruling tortured souls. All that would give  _anyone_ a bad disposition, so Marco didn't hold it against him.

  "This is unsanitary," Jean announced after touring the dismal entirety of Marco's quarters. "There are cockroaches in your bathroom, mould on the ceiling and cabinetry, expired milk in your refrigerator and your neighbours are either porno filmmakers or having sex."

There was no appropriate answer to that, so Marco just shrugged in embarrassment.

  "So? What do you want to do now?" Jean flopped on Marco's threadbare couch, kicking his feet up on the nicked coffee table that Marco had scavenged from another yard sale. "Watch a flick?"

Marco hesitated. Before they continued with their ruse of friendship, he had to clarify one thing first.

  "Um, Jean?"

  "What?"

  "Are you, you know..." Marco gulped. "What do you think of gays?"

Jean eyed him as he fingered one of Marco's dog-eared books that seemed to lie everywhere. "I don't think anything of anyone. Sexual orientation doesn't sway my opinion on the fact that humans are just walking meat sacks."

  "What if..." Marco took a deep breath and blurted out the question before he could lose what courage he had. "What if I told you I was gay?"

  " 'That's fucking gross, I'm outta here'," Jean drawled, smirking. "Is that what you want me to say?"

Marco exhaled, shuddering. "No, but I wouldn't have been surprised."

  " 'Pride and Prejudice'," Jean's tawny gaze scanned the blurb of another book, and his voice was dry. "You humans are so amusing. You think that the opinion of the majority makes the norm of society, decides what's acceptable, and what isn't. You manipulate the laws of the Bible to your own advantage so you come out looking perfectly respectable. You scorn what isn't the 'norm', simply because everyone else is doing it and that influences you to think that it's perfectly alright to discriminate. Racism, sexism, homophobia... they're all illusions based on the simple flaw you humans often possess: ignorance."

Marco was speechless, and Jean continued his tirade.

  "Worst of all are those Bible-thumpers.They think they're so great, using His book to hurt people and believing 'oh, this is right, I'm doing the right thing, this is exactly what He would have wanted'. They conveniently forget all the more important verses: Do not judge, so that you will not be judge. For in the way you judge, you will be judged as well. So what gives them the right to discriminate? What entitles them to the idea that anyone who's different from the self-proclaimed 'norm' doesn't deserve equality?"

Jean looked over at Marco, and softened his harsh tone. "I wouldn't think worse of you just because you were gay. If you think that you're going to Hell based on other people's beliefs about how the Bible works, then you wouldn't be going alone. People who wear polyester-cotton or had sex before marriage would be accompanying you."

Marco had never been defended like that. It was a refreshing experience that was going to make him cry. A ghost of a smile flitted across Marco's face, and little by little, he released the reins of restraint on himself.

  "I want to go to a bar," Marco decided with more resolution than he'd ever had in his life. He wanted to have fun. He was going to have it. "A gay bar."

Jean shrugged, and put the book he was holding aside. "Why not?"

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spoke about a lot of controversial stuff, but the parts referring to the Bible are true. Most of the old laws in Deuteronomy were declared moot as of the New Testament, and those laws included crazy stuff like 'you must not wear clothes of mixed material'.
> 
> Sorry if there are any offensive statements in there, but that's just my opinion. I think people discriminate because they don't fully understand what they're discriminating against, and also because they don't even try to. I think people are easily swayed by the idea of what is 'normal', a yardstick created by the majority and it is used to beat down the minority. If you took offence from anything I said, I apologise but I stand by what I said.


	3. Temporary Crutch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco invites the Devil to a gay bar. What could possibly go wrong? (be careful what the fuck you wish for)

The Blue Moon bar was five blocks away from Marco's sad excuse for an apartment, and according to Jean, it could not have been more clichéd than if all the goers were wearing clingy white V-neck tees and skinny jeans. There was an odd assortment of vehicles parked along the street outside it, varying from motorcycles to SUVs. Accustomed to the sight, Marco led the way in, with a very curious Jean trailing after him.

  "Good grief," Jean pinched his nose upon entering the premises. "Am I to assume that  _no on_ _e_ here understands the meaning of 'moderation' when it comes to the application of cologne?"

  "I guess not," Marco chuckled, sliding into a dimly-lit booth at the corner. "What would you like?"

  "I'll start with a gin and tonic," Jean held up a hand as the freckled man stood up to get the order. "No, I'll go. What do _you_ want?"

  "Just a Sidecar," Marco propped his elbows on the table, pitching his voice over the cacophony of music and other people's conversation. It was relatively tame tonight since tomorrow was a weekday, so the manager had forgone the strobe lights on the dance floor and kept the volume on the music low. A few couples gyrated on the dance floor, grinding and feeling each other up. Others were scattered here and there, making quiet but not innocent conversation, or making out. Marco had only ever come here once, and what had ensued had put him off from ever returning again. Until now.

  "Be right back," Jean headed over to the bar, squeezing past men who cast a second, appreciative glance his way.

To be fair, Jean was...well,  _unfairly_ good-looking. His bi-coloured undercut was eye-catching in itself, but combined with his lithe yet sinewy physique, striking ochre eyes, facial structure with cheekbones and a jawline that could cut ice, and to top it all off: a fantastic sense of style in his black leather jacket paired with dark straight jeans (flaunting a fabulously tight ass). Marco sat a little straighter, knowing  _he_ was Jean's companion here. 

Jean leaned over the bar, placing his order with a bartender and exchanging light conversation with him until an attractive man in his late twenties or early thirties interrupted him. His intention was all too obvious in his body language, the way he angled his torso towards Jean and winked at him. Marco felt a bitter taste at the back of his mouth, and he didn't like the uncomfortable squelching at the bottom of his stomach. So he averted his eyes from the sight, worrying the hem of his shirt. There was a yellowing stain on the shirt, one he'd neglected to notice before putting it on. A discreet sniff reminded him that he hadn't showered since this morning, and a swipe at his chin was a glaring indicator that he hadn't shaved either. He'd been so excited about having fun with his new 'friend', that he'd forgotten all about his own personal hygiene.

_No wonder people don't like me_ , Marco internally groaned, settling into a mood of self-loathing for the night.  _I'm an embarrassment to be around, not to mention a dead man walking._

A flash of motion caught his eye, and he glanced over to see Jean jerking a thumb in his direction, his expression wry. The man gave Jean a disbelieving look, then looked thoroughly put-out and passed some sort of remark that had Jean's left eyebrow twitching. Marco wondered what Jean had said to inspire such a reaction.

The bartender served up the ordered beverages, and Jean walked back with them in hand and a derisive countenance, his pale amber eyes flinty. Marco asked what had happened, and Jean obliged after taking a sip of his drink, as if to wash away some terrible taste in his mouth.

* * *

 

  "A gin and tonic," Jean waved to get the attention of the bartender, leaning over the wooden bar and resting his elbows on it. "And a sidecar."

  "Coming right up," the bartender--  _Connie_ , the name tag read-- whipped out the shaker. "Haven't seen you around here before."

  "Mm," Jean nodded. "I  _am_ new around these parts. Any pieces of advice?"

  "Well, you should try--"

  "Hello there," a tanned, flaxen-haired man with a 50s Hollywood movie star smile positioned himself between the bartender and Jean, rudely and effectively interrupting their conversation. "Haven't seen you around here before."

Jean slanted him a look that could have frozen an elephant at twenty paces, but the movie star smile didn't falter. "If you had been paying attention to the conversation you so rudely interrupted, perhaps you might've noticed that yes, I am new around here."

  "British?" he offered a hand. "My grandma's British. I'm Dennis Eibringer. Are you here alone?"

Jean gave the man a once-over: smart casual clothing, pressed trousers, overhyped boater shoes. His nails were neatly filed, his hair perfectly coiffed and his teeth whiter than a toothpaste advertisement. He looked like the kind of man who hit the gym regularly, was on a diet he didn't like but stuck to anyway, and had everything going his way in life. The overall first impression was a man who worked in an office with a view and a pampered one at that.

The secondary impression only beings like Jean could get was a corrupted, amoral, debaucher who indulged in multiple sex partners while being married with a child and another on the way. His soul was a tarnished copper coin, glinting where it wasn't oxidised such that it still captured one's attention in the gutter, but only turned you off when you saw how badly corroded it had become. It wasn't the worst soul Jean had the misfortune of coming across (you see a lot worse when your jurisdiction is the destination of those condemned to damnation), but it was repulsive nevertheless. Did he know that one of his many sex partners had recently contracted HIV? The one who'd called to meet him tonight at the nearby hotel? Probably not.

Then he recalled he'd yet to give this man a semblance of a courteous response. "No, I'm not British. And no, I'm not here alone. I came with someone."

To indicate, Jean jerked a thumb in Marco's direction and intentionally avoided divulging his name. Dennis Eibringer squinted at Marco, and apparently recognised him, judging from the antipathic look that wiped the smarmy smile from his face. " _Him?_ You can't be serious."

  "What could you possibly mean by that?" Jean's voice concealed the barest hints of a knife's edge, his eyes frosty.

  "I don't-- I mean, that's  _Marco Bodt_ ," Dennis Eibringer stammered, visibly disconcerted. "He's... he's a loser."

  "In what way?" the knife in Jean's voice only got sharper, and if this man didn't watch himself, he was going to get his throat slit by it.

  "I--"

  "Here you are," Connie said with false cheerfulness, all-too aware of the tension transpiring between Jean and Dennis Eibringer. "One gin and tonic, and one Sidecar. And do try the shish kebab place on 47th. My girlfriend loves that place."

  "Noted with thanks," Jean gave Connie the briefest of smiles, and taking the drinks, walked back to Marco's booth without so much as a polite farewell to Dennis Eibringer.

  "What was that all about?" Marco asked tentatively, taking his Sidecar from Jean, uncertain if he should ask.

  "Met a friend of yours," Jean took a sip of his drink, the ice clinking against the glass. "Dennis Eibringer?"

  "Oh," Marco turned rueful. "Right. Him."

  "An ex of yours?"

  "What? Good grief, no."

The scowl that seemed to be a permanent fixture on Jean's face deepened fractionally. "I heard regret there."

Marco gave a mirthless laugh. Jean was certain the freckled man was unaware that his own face had contorted into a pained expression, and resisted the inexplicable urge to comfort him.

  "I used to have a fatuous crush on Dennis," Marco worried his lower lip between his index finger and thumb. "I was young, and I was desperate and foolish."

  "He hurt you," Jean surmised, steepling his hands. "Would it be lancing an old wound if I happened to ask you how he did it?"

  "It would," Marco leaned back, folding his arms and huffing because he knew he was going to tell Jean anyway. "About a few years ago, I asked Dennis if he'd like to have a drink with me at one of the hotels nearby. We all know what that means, and what it entails. I wasn't expecting Dennis to say yes, but he did, and I was thrilled. So we went, had a drink, got a hotel room... I was so stupidly excited. I mean,  _Dennis Eibringer_. Gorgeous, rich, whatever you want, he's it. Then right in front of the door, he gives me this smile and says: 'goodnight', and then goes right next door and starts to bang someone else."

A muscle jumped in Jean's jaw, but he kept his voice controlled and even. "Just as well."

  "What?" Marco's head snapped up, bemused.

  "Dennis Eibringer," Jean drawled. "is a serial adulterer. He has at least five current lovers, all of whom know nothing about each other, nor are they aware that he is married with children."

  " _Married with children?"_ Marco looked floored. "You're joking."

Jean decided to avoid mentioning that he could see people's souls, particularly Marco's right now as it appeared to be a faltering in its brightness, fluctuating in the wake of shock. "There's a line on his ring finger, not quite a tan line, but the kind of line you'd expect to see on someone who wears a ring a little too tight for comfort, resulting in some blockage of blood flow. Nothing serious, especially since he takes it off all the time, probably right after he's kissed his wife goodbye at the front door before he goes to work and slips it back on just before he unlocks the front door upon his return. He's been married not more than five years, has a child about the age of two, after taking into consideration the stain on his shoulder from what is apparently mashed bananas. He's bisexual, got married to shut his parents up, but keeps an active nightlife on the side with several lovers. He's going to contract some sexually-transmitted disease one day, so you're better off."

  "Did you get all that just by talking to him for two minutes?" Marco's nose wrinkled.

  "Two and a half," Jean corrected. "And yes. He's a cheating bastard, and you'd have been even more miserable if you'd hooked up with him."

  "Wow," Marco leaned back with a thump, and ran a hand through his hair. "That's... great."

  "Are you sure you should be drinking that?" Jean not-that-subtly changed the subject. "What about your liver?"

  "Cancer's spread to it," Marco took a generous sip of his Sidecar. "The potential cirrhosis of it can't hurt my chances any more than the cancer already has."

Jean looked at the spectral countdown over Marco's head. That sip had taken off three hours and twenty minutes. With an errant flick of his hand that might have passed for a muscle tic, Jean detoxed the portion of alcohol Marco had consumed. There was everything in the rules that went against extending someone's life, but nothing in it that punished reclamation of the original amount.

  "So why are we here, exactly?" Jean asked, glancing about the bar once more, nothing intriguing him. The people here had souls varying from flashy neon signs that flickered annoyingly to tarnished like Dennis Eibringer's.

  "I don't really know either," Marco admitted. "I guess going to bars with friends is the stereotypical idea of having fun?"

  "You're not enjoying yourself," Jean pointed out.

  "You're the one who brought up Dennis Eibringer and asked me about him," Marco shot back.

  "Hm," was all Jean said as he reclined in the booth. Marco took a wary sip of his drink, oblivious to the thing Jean was doing with his fingers every time he drank.

The more Marco drank, the more Jean's hand twitched. The more Marco drank, the more he loosened up, and began volunteering his life story. By the end of it, he'd consumed two Sidecars, one classic Manhattan and for some ridiculous reason, two shots of Dewar's Blue Label. If Jean hadn't intervened, Marco would have successfully taken at least a full day off his original remaining lifespan. As it was, he was dead drunk, unconscious, and Jean decided to spare him the hangover that would inevitably follow by removing all traces of alcohol from his bloodstream.

When Marco woke up the next morning, his head was incomprehensibly clear without so much as a throb of a headache, and he was lying on the softest bed he'd ever come across in a luxuriously furnished room he didn't recognise. His clothes were gone, and a terry cloth bathrobe protected his modesty. It was emblazoned with the bright blue logo of the Ritz Carlton.

Marco's jaw dropped.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JEAN IS SUCH A


	4. Loosen Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco wakes up in the fanciest hotel he's ever had the luxury of staying in, and Jean is telling him to just go with it.

  "With all due respect--"

  "Oh, do shut up, Armin," Jean said irritably, weary of his subordinate's lectures. "Someone had to answer the call, and apparently no one else was free to do it."

  "But 4 months--"

  "13 weeks is no more than 3 months," Jean closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the sofa. "Or has all these centuries torturing souls made you forget how to count?"

Armin, taking the form of a young man in his early twenties and dressed sharply in a crisply tailored suit, resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They were a strikingly luminous blue, and his pupils were slits, the only giveaway of his demonic nature. "Sir, you have more important duties to attend to. The Fourth Circle--"

  "Send Eren to manage it, I don't care," Jean groaned. "You can't possibly expect me to go running around fixing things every time a pipe so much as fucking leaks, do you?"

  "Lucifer--"

  "Don't," Jean's eyes opened and Armin stepped back when they burned brighter than the infernos of all the Circles combined. His true form was beginning to peek through the human façade, and if he wasn't careful he would easily set the place alight with it. "Don't call me by that name. Ever. Do you understand? That is no more my name than you are an angel."

Armin flinched, and Jean instantly regretted making such a low blow. It might have been eons ago, but time doesn't heal the wound of being a fallen angel. It never does. It's part of their punishment to feel the scars that will never fade, the punishment of the proud and arrogant. Armin was the name the fallen angel formerly known as Azazel had chosen, too wounded by his desecration to answer to his angelic name.

  "I'm sorry, Armin," Jean sighed, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. "That was... despicable of me. But please don't call me by my angelic name. I've lost the right to it as much as you have."

The archdemon was keenly aware of his master's pain; after all, he felt it just as acutely. "...Sir, what do I tell the others? When they've found out what you're doing?"

  "Tell them I'm answering a summoning," Jean's tone returned to it's businesslike normalcy. "one none of them bothered to answer. Besides, it's a worthy cause. I'm procuring the purest soul I've come across in a millennia."

  "Sir?"

  "It's absolutely uncorrupted, Armin," Jean's eyes took on an almost feverish look. "It's been untainted, despite the state of this world. Do you understand the implications of such a find?"

Armin did, but he didn't like the manic look in his master's eyes. Being appreciative was one thing, but to obsess over a soul would mean terrible repercussions. He wanted to remind Jean of them, but found his tongue bound. Frustrated by what was likely to be the interceding of a higher power, possibly the Fates (and that bode  _so_ well), Armin merely gave Jean a constipated look that his superior either failed to notice or ignored entirely. Likely it was the latter.

A twinge resounded at the peripheral edges of Jean's consciousness, the stirring of another's that he'd tied to his own last night. It was typically considered an unnecessary and even undesirable measure by his kind and subordinates, but Jean had connected Marco's consciousness to his own. He told himself it was to fulfill the contract, to role-play the concern a "friend" would show. Armin would lecture his ears off if he found out what Jean had done. 

Jean had essentially placed Marco within his realm of power, by extension making the dying mortal invincible for the rest of his short life as the Fates had designated, and whatever the freckled man did, Jean would know of it even if he wasn't present.

Right now, Marco was beginning to awaken, and he was going to get a very rude awakening indeed. After all, the last thing he would remember after drinking himself into oblivion was being in that seedy gay bar in Jinae, Colorado, USA. Jean had to wonder how the pure-souled man would react to waking up in London's fanciest hotel.

Shock would no doubt be the primary element, Jean mused as he levered himself off the couch. It would make for an amusing sight.

  "Make yourself scarce, Armin," Jean ordered. "I'll deal with whatever you have for me tonight, when the mortal is asleep."

Armin nearly but his tongue in a bid to hold it from voicing the myriad of concerns he had for his master, who was paying far too much attention and care to this contract. An ominous feeling persisted at the nape of his neck, never a good sign. As higher beings, they would be wise not to ignore these feelings, because premonitions were _very_ real for them. With a quick, stiff bow, Azazel made his reluctant exit and vanished.

Jean crossed the sitting room of the suite and filled the doorway to the bedroom, closing the distance quickly and easily with three strides of his long legs. He didn't have a particular appearance in mind when he assembled a corporeal form (his true form would have blinded Marco), just an absentminded design that Lilith would claim in her usual, arrogant way that embodied Jean's attitude. To be fair, this wolf-like, aloof and not altogether banal appearance did bear similarities to his character. 

Marco was sitting upright, dark eye unclouded by the hangover that he should have but didn't, because of Jean's intervention. His system was clean of any artificial toxins, and unimpaired by any residual noxious substances unrelated to his cancer. Bewilderment riddled his freckled features, and when Jean entered his scope of vision, he locked gazes with the blonde and opened his mouth. No words came out.

 _Apt_ , Jean thought wryly. He was reacting just as--

  "Jean, I can't afford this!"

Confused by the unexpected outburst as much as it had annoyingly interrupted his train of thought, Jean scrutinized Marco's perplexed face. 

  "Jean," Marco repeated, panic edging his voice as it became higher in pitch. "I can't--"

  "Relax," Jean finally recovered from his exasperated bemusement. "I can."

The surprise on Marco's face was mildly gratifying and somewhat insulting. "You can?"

  "I'm the Devil," Jean said dryly, perching on the foot of the king-sized bed. "I have hands in various dealings, both legal and not. I have a fairly considerable material wealth at my disposal."

  "I feel vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of having my comfort funded at the expense of someone's misdeeds," Marco looked squeamish, and Jean laughed.

  "Let's just say your stay at the Ritz is being paid for with a negligible amount someone embezzled from a well-to-do company. How about that?"

  "You embezzled someone?" Marco looked downright scandalized.

  "No, someone I sent to the Fifth circle of Hell did," Jean grinned. The freckled man's discomfort didn't give an inch, and Jean begrudgingly admired his moral obstinance.

  "Alright," Jean sighed, waving his hand. Marco saw a dismissive gesture, didn't see the aftermath of that negligible action. Jean had cursorily changed bank accounts that funded Marco's stay, using money from an investment portfolio in China. That country was already revolutionizing the world economy, and it had been with insider's information (tortured out of a corrupted soul, of course) that Jean had bought a large margin of shares from a Chinese company.

  "Where exactly am I?" Marco queried, not entirely sure what to expect, nor did he have a good feeling about it. His mind was reeling, his stomach growling. Any more and he was going to vomit all over the expensive Egyptian cotton sheets. That would be disaster upon catastrophe.

  "London," Jean said as flippantly as if informing Marco of the weather.

  "London," Marco repeated stupidly. "As in England?"

  "Of course, England," the great ruler of Hell himself looked miffed. "How many Londons could there possibly be in the world?"

  "There's one in Ontario," Marco found himself saying, his tone more droll than he felt.

Jean looked impressed. "Not many people know about that."

  "Except the people who live in Ontario, I suppose," Marco grunted as he tried to get off the bed. "How did we get here, anyway? I don't remember getting on a plane."

  "You were pissed," Jean said matter-of-factly. "And nobody said anything about getting on planes."

  "Then how...?"

  "For someone who knows of the existence of more than one London, you're awfully slow, aren't you?" Jean's voice was devoid of any genuine offence. He was quietly thankful that Marco was dense enough not to connect all the dots at once. It made him much more manageable, less cunning... more tolerable, therefore. "I'm not some simple human who relies on your metal tin-can jets and dinky engines for transportation. It's beneath me."

  "So you teleported us almost halfway across the globe?" Marco asked, feeling nauseous.

  "It was 4,720 miles, give or take," Jean rolled his eyes. "Don't exaggerate."

  "I think I'm going to be sick."

Jean pointed in the direction of the toilet, and Marco stumbled towards it, where the sounds of someone being horribly sick on an empty stomach could be heard. When Marco emerged with a pallid countenance a good half an hour later, there was a steaming tray of waffles drizzled in maple syrup and a bowl of seasonal fruits waiting for him on the bed.

  "Did you conjure that up, too?" Marco wrinkled his brow, genuinely curious.

  "I called room service," Jean replied, giving the freckled man a wry smile.

The blonde watched Marco eat with an embarrassingly voracious appetite, errantly ghosting his fingers over Marco's cheek and hair and when the freckled man inquired about the reason behind the physical contact, Jean's answer had been alarming: "You're the first human I've touched in centuries without the intent of ending their life."

  "You mean..." Marco nearly choked on piece of food he hadn't masticated completely. "You..."

  "Of course I've killed people," Jean abruptly withdrew from Marco, getting off the bed and walking over to the windows. His face was drawn in an expression of anger. "It's one of my duties. To execute, to punish. Besides, you're also the first human that I don't find utterly repugnant."

  "Um, thanks?"

  "You're welcome," Jean's tone was dry. "It's new, you see. I don't usually have the urge to stay close to meat sacks. After all, your kind frequently sickens me."

Marco frowned. "But wasn't it you who tempted Eve?"

Jean gave a humourless laugh. "It was me, indeed. I tried to prove to Him that humans were weak, fallible creatures. Undeserving of the respect we were commanded to give them unconditionally. And I was right, wasn't I? Look at how your kind has degenerated, how your kind has polluted the Earth He so generously gave you to take care of--"

Marco had gone very pale, and he was looking at Jean with fear illuminating his dark eyes. Jean sighed and rubbed his face.

  "I'm sorry," it was his second apology in two hours, and Jean didn't like it. He hadn't meant to inspire such terror in this man, the one who least deserved to bear the brunt of his rage. The one with the pure soul, and the virtuous heart. "I didn't... I'm sorry. Pretend you didn't hear me going off like that."

  "I..." Marco swallowed thickly. "I..."

Jean anticipated what he was going to say, and quickly closed the distance between them and clapped a hand over Marco's mouth. It was sticky from the maple syrup, and there were crumbs under his palm. "Don't. Just forget it and finish your breakfast, quickly. I want to show you London. The one in England, of course."

* * *

 

  "This is so cool!" Marco looked like an overexcited ten year old in the body of a twenty-five year old.

He was pressed up against the glass of the capsule, 130 metres above the ground and eyes as big as dinner plates. Jean sat with his legs crossed on the bench inside the capsule, thoroughly amused by the man rather than impressed by the skyline of London. The blonde easily concluded that Marco had never been this high up, or had such a view. Indeed, in last night's drunken escapade, Marco had fumblingly related to Jean the details of his childhood.

It had not been an unhappy one, from what Jean could gather. His father was apparently the sole bread-maker, earning enough to make ends meet but not much more. Strict traditionalist, which meant his mother was very likely a housewife since the father would not tolerate otherwise. The family, consisting of his parents, a little sister and Marco himself, vacationed once a year and always in the same place. It was a lakeside cabin not far from their house, about a four hour's drive along the highway. That lake was the closest thing Marco had ever come to seeing the ocean, the biggest natural body of water until now.

  "That's the Thames, isn't it?" Marco pointed at the wide river, along which tiny tourist boats floated. It was the longest river in England, second longest in UK after the River Severn. Jean told Marco so.

  "Are we going to ride one of the boats?" the freckled man turned on Jean with appeal in his doe eyes.

  "If you want," Jean shrugged. It  _was_ Marco's first time in London, and this most definitely was for his satisfaction, not Jean's. "But I have to warn you, it's terribly boring."

  "Really?" Marco considered that, then cheerfully abandoned the idea and left their next destination to Jean's guidance.

They went up the iconic 'Big Ben' (Marco adamantly refused to refer to it by its official name of 'Elizabeth Tower'), Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Wesminster Abbey and even Hyde Park. Jean quietly went along with Marco's whims, entertained his curiosity, and paid for everything. He assured Marco that yes, the money was from ethical sources.  

  "Why are you doing this?" Marco suddenly asked, mouth full of fish and chips.

Taken aback by the unanticipated question when he'd been enjoying the rare child-like innocence Marco possessed in the form of his unworldliness, Jean put down the newspaper portion of food. He expected himself to have a million answers to choose from, and found that he came up sadly lacking. So he was honest, or as close to as he could be.

  "Because we're contractually friends," Jean said clearly, devoid of sentiment. This was a contract, and he'd forgotten that somewhere along the way. Somewhere between Marco's wholehearted smile, and his genuine credulity, he had formed the protective instinct as one would of an uninitiated newborn. He'd forgotten that this was a business transaction: the ruse of friendship in exchange for a highly-prized, untainted soul. It had been too easy to forget, to lose himself in the pleasurable company of someone who didn't have a hidden agenda, a duplicitous intention.

  "Oh," Marco seemed to accept this answer the way one would swallow a pill without water, and Jean realised that while the answer he'd given was not altogether incorrect, it wasn't the one Marco had wanted to hear.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To HARUBI and FandomQueen, you two are driving me insane (I mean that in an affectionate way, the same way I call my friends 'boobs' and 'losers').
> 
> To everyone else reading this (kiseuk, you have been missed, do comment more), ENJOY and I hope it is satisfactory!


	5. Getting Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean shows Marco a whole new world (don't you dare start singing) and Marco shows Jean a new perspective (still no singing allowed).

  "No, no," there were dried tears streaking Jean's sharp cheekbones from a solid five-minute bout of mirth, and the blonde was still grinning like a madman. "You don't hold them like that."

Marco looked thoroughly put-out as Jean reached over the table to adjust his hold on the pair of wooden sticks a fair percentage of the Asian continent used as cutlery, again. "Can't I just use a fork?"

  "You're a citizen of the world," Jean didn't pause in his instructions, a faint smirk playing about the corners of his lips. "You're going to behave like one, by hook or by crook."

  "What does that phrase even mean?" Marco asked, sounding interested in the uncommonly-used expression.

  " 'By any means necessary'," Jean continued to rearrange the freckled man's grip, and the faint smirk became very obvious as he lifted amused amber eyes to meet darker, frustrated ones. "It also means that even if you try to change the subject, I'm still not going to let you ask for a fork."

Marco was becoming an endless source of levity for the transcendental entity, with his lack of hidden agendas and not an iota of manipulatory or malicious intent. Even five-year olds nowadays always behaved with a secondary objective. Yet a man five times that age was as artless and as guileless as a newborn child, and Jean found himself instintictively reacting to protect him from the turpitude of a world too immersed in self-centred desires.

Armin never failed to voice his concerns about the situation, and expressed particularly apprehension when Jean exhibited his solicitous instincts to shield Marco from the influence of the world. He insisted that it wasn’t right, since Jean of all people should be making it his goal and ambition to suborn Marco, to tempt him into his undoing. He shouldn’t be steering Marco away from unsavory districts, shouldn’t be warning him against the dangers of his own naievete. It was true: the whole reason for Jean’s fall from grace was because he was adamant about the flaws of humanity. It had become the sole purpose of his existence to prove that humans were unfailingly weak to temptation, and would always end up corrupted somehow. So his inexplicable desire to preserve Marco’s purity was in every sense, unbelievable and literally went against his true nature. Yet the instinct was as easy to act on as breathing.

The archdemon was stonily warned to stay off that particular topic, but whenever Jean summoned him to bring news of Hell while Marco was asleep, he would somehow manage to slide in a remark edgewise and bring up the topic. Eren, always on Armin’s side--the insufferable twat--would occasionally show up in Armin’s place because the blonde was preoccupied with his other duties and relay the same worries, only with less subtlety. The only thing that stopped Jean from vaporizing the idiotic fool was the fear of waking Marco up.

And Jean was blindsided by Marco’s innocent hilarity. The freckled man felt no fatigue, suffered no loss of appetite and not a twinge of chronic pain from his body’s shutting down, thanks to Jean’s interference. When he failed to get drunk after imbibing multiple glasses of beer at a German pub as was his original intention (“you can’t go to a German pub and not get carried away on German beer” was Marco’s argument that didn’t meet much resistance), he put two and two together… and got sixteen.

  “I must be evolving!” Marco’s eyes were shining and huge as the dinner plates they’d been served earlier at a local restaurant (German portions were huge). “Like… like Captain America! He was a super-soldier, and his metabolic rate was so high that he couldn’t get drunk! Maybe that’s why I don’t feel like I’m dying! I’m turning into a super-something!”

Jean hadn’t laughed quite so hard since Reiner and Bertholdt had been caught having exhibitionist sex in front of the conservative, wayward souls in Hell, the thirty minute long pornographic display between two masculine demons having been torture enough to last at least a decade.

They visited places across the globe, Jean always teleporting Marco in the dead of the night whilst he was asleep (and cutting Armin off because frankly, it was annoying to be repeatedly reminded that you were Satan and you weren’t supposed to be coddling a human, yes he knew now shut up) until the freckled man was used to waking up in an entirely different country, sometimes different hemisphere. He was always lethargic when he woke up, spending a lot of energy in one day trying to cram all the tourist-things-to-do within 24 hours or less. But his unfailing jump to animated delight as he climbed out of bed and pressed himself up against the window to take in the scenic view of a new country was like watching a young child wake up on Christmas morning. They’d have breakfast, then set off with Marco taking the lead till around tea and he’d let Jean pick the next tourist spot and place for dinner. He’d almost always insist on taking human means of transport, rather than letting Jean ‘zap them everywhere’, because Marco was emphatic about ‘the journey means more than the destination’, a phrase that was utterly lost on a being that had been conscious since the dawn of time.

But the journeys did have their use: Jean learned the details about Marco’s life, some of the more depressing ones like his disinheritance extricated in his moments of melancholy. In those times, the full moon that was his soul would wax and wane, and Jean quickly changed the topic to a more cheerful one in the irrational, unfounded fear that it might vanish completely, leaving behind a void. He could safely say now that if he had been human, he would easily have been Marco’s best friend.

It was easy to like the human, soul notwithstanding (although it was a heavily contributing factor where Jean's behaviour was concerned). The spattering of freckles on his round-jawed face, the nose that demanding 'boop'-ing, the gentle lilt of his voice and the dark, velvet eyes that struck Jean with its similarity to a young doe's. Yes, Jean had come across much more attractive meat sacks over the expanse of time that he'd been in existence. Sultry, sexy, cute, gorgeous... they were all a construct of popularised beliefs and simple deception of bone structure. And all these beautiful meat sacks had souls as filthy as the bottom of a sewer drain and demands as ridiculous as the chances of finding a 118-carat diamond among the shit.

  " _I want dominion of the Earth._ " Fundamentally rejected because it would bring about economic and social collapse, not to mention He would be very upset. Hitler tried to pull that stint once, and look how that had turned out.

  " _I want immortality._ " Again, fundamentally rejected because the Fates wouldn't allow it. Also highly unimaginative, slotted alongside the request of unparalleled wealth.

  " _I want to bear your child_." Jean just snorted; he was a higher power that had existed since the dawn of time, not some common beast with reproductive organs.

It had come up once between Marco and Jean, on a particularly long train ride in Taiwan.

  "Why a guy?" was Marco's innocuous question.

  "Why not a guy?" Jean had shrugged. "I could take on a more feminine appearance"--to demonstrate, he morphed such that his figure was more curvaceous, his eyes with that upward appeal girls tended to have, his lips fuller-- "but to be honest, I could care less either way. Besides, it's hard to sleep on your stomach when you have boobs."

He reverted back to his more masculine appearance, and continued his explanation.

  "Sex is simple: I'm either male or female. However, I am also neither. I don't have genitalia. I'm as much as eunuch as a Ken doll, but I can also choose to form a vagina or a dick. Whether I can sire or bear offspring is a question I don't want answered.

  Gender is a much more tricky question. I told you to use male pronouns where I am concerned because it makes things a lot smoother to go on. Imagine walking into a bar, gesturing at me when I look like this, and referring to me as a 'she'. Not a lot of people can swallow that very easily. You can choose whichever: he, she, they... _it,_ even. I'm not human. The social and gender construct of humans is complex and tricky, and sometimes there is no correct answer. They refer to G--" Jean choked on the word, and waved away Marco's concerned bewilderment "--Him as a 'he', even though he's an entity without a sex. He's all-powerful, all-seeing... and labelled as a male for reasons that could vary from 'makes things less complicated' to 'such a great entity must be a he, it would be humiliating if He were a she'. Like I said, no right answer.

  I don't have a definitive gender or sex. I just choose to be a male because if I were a female, I'd have to deal with men who think 'no' means 'yes' and 'piss off' means 'take me, I'm yours'."

Marco had laughed at the Disney Hercules reference, and the topic was quickly changed to the discussion of Greek mythology and whether it really existed or not.

It wasn't a well-rounded answer, nor a completely accurate one. But where Jean was concerned, it was true. If he could teleport Marco and himself halfway across the globe in the middle of the night, into a five-star hotel room without having to check, it wasn't much of a stretch to believe that he could morph a dick or vagina for himself. The freckled man accepted the explanation without much fuss, understanding as much that the gender and sex thing didn’t apply to someone who had witnessed the creation of the Earth and humanity itself.

On more lighthearted occasions, it was discovered that Marco had the ‘Devil’s own luck’ (Jean’s pun) at poker and blackjack (they used candy as the pot), while Jean was inordinately skilled at Go Fish, of all things.

* * *

 The spectral clock never stopped its ominous countdown, and Jean had decided to ignore it before he did something stupid out of frustration.

3 weeks, 5 days, 2 hours and 49 minutes left.

Marco’s light snores were the only sounds in the hotel room, and Jean was fully aware that he should be summoning Armin or some other less-engaged archdemon to deal with ‘business’ in his Realm. But his eyes were riveted on the slow rise and fall of gently-curved shoulders, and the morbid knowledge that in less than a month they would never move again.

What was he doing? What in Hell was he going to do with Marco’s soul? It was pure and rare, that much was certain. But Armin had been right about this much: it was his self-made purpose to corrupt all souls, and to torment them for their corruption. Why was he so adamant about preserving Marco’s soul? It would have no place in Hell, and the contract left little elsewhere for it to be.

But it was his, and his to deal with. He could keep it away in some backroom and never touch it again, or put it on a pedestal like some trophy, or just corrupt it as Armin believed he should.

Sighing, Jean readied himself for another tongue-lashing and summoned.

Surprise, surprise, it was Reiner who seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the threshold. The blonde was a strapping 6 feet tall, with the build of a pro-wrestler and a face to match. His close-cropped flaxen hair was shades yellower than Jean’s own ashy-blond mop (excluding his darker undercut), and his golden eyes gleamed. If Jean had to liken Reiner to an animal, he would choose a lion.

A very uncomfortable-looking lion, which was unusual. He opened his mouth to speak, and Jean’s pleasantly surprised mood plummeted into annoyance.

  “Armin sent me,” the archdemon was in a complicated but close and flamboyant relationship with Bertholdt, another archdemon, and looked inordinately uneasy. It was out of character to see him like that, and it quickly became clear why. “He wanted me to try my hand at talking some sense into you.”

  “How nice of him,” Jean said coldly, and Reiner flinched at the glacial tone despite his brawny appearance that fairly dwarfed Jean's lithe but much more slender one. “And do you have any lines to recite before we get on to more pressing matters?”

  “Well, to be perfectly fair to Armin,” Reiner shrugged helplessly. “He is a little… tense since he has to keep an eye on you _and_ run Hell in your place while you’re gone.”

  “He doesn’t have to ‘keep an eye’ on me,” Jean rolled his eyes. “I’m perfectly capable of carrying out a contract without fucking up, thank you. Even if the last one I did was centuries ago.”

  “And all you had to do was make some cheating husband jealous of their wife,” Reiner pointed out. “In the 1800s. Times have changed.”

  “Desires have changed,” Jean snapped. “This is one innocuous contract, and it ends in a little more than 3 weeks. Change the subject. _Now_.”

Reiner begrudgingly let the topic go, but his eyes occasionally slid over to the sleeping human beside his Master. All he saw was a head of dark hair, a button nose and some freckles. Nothing remarkable, which piqued Reiner’s interest even more. He looked _harder_ , and was visibly taken aback.

  “Sir, that soul…” Reiner trailed off, then gaped at Jean. “It’s unsullied. Why…?”

  “I didn’t see a need to corrupt it,” Jean said acidly.

  “But it’s your intention to do so once it’s contractually yours, right?” Reiner raised his eyebrows, insistent.

  “Whatever I do with the soul is my decision,” Jean snapped, fixing a silencing glare on the muscular archdemon. “Be it to defile the soul or keep it in some quarantine chamber, it is none of your concern.”

  “So be it, sir,” Reiner would have shrugged if Jean had not been his superior. “But I don’t think _He_ will stay quiet about this.”

Jean paused; he had not considered that He might get involved. After all, it was a human’s decision to sign their soul over to Jean or one of his lackeys, so He didn’t really have much of a say in it. They were wont to do as they pleased, and with Jean installed in an eternal Realm of tormenting them for their mistakes, they wouldn't go unpunished for their foolishness. That was the disadvantages of giving them free will, Jean had scoffed.

But now… now Jean wasn’t so sure. There was a chance that He might interfere, since it wasn't everyday you popped across a soul as untainted as this one. Even if centuries could pass in a blink of His eye, and time was irrelevant to Him, He saw _all_. And this definitely wouldn't escape His attention. It made for a headache-worthy problem, one Jean really didn't need on his plate right now.

  “Leave,” Jean told Reiner, his voice frigid but noticeably weary. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Reiner gave a short bow, his expression still taut with discomfort regarding his Master's situation, and vanished.

Having dealt with _that_ , Jean turned his attention back to Marco, steadfastly ignoring the incoporeal chronometer floating over his head, and choosing instead to focus on the soft glow of the orb that was his soul. It radiated a gentle light from the centre of his chest cavity, where his heart was biologically situated. Jean could actually reach in and _touch_ it…

His hand was halfway there before he realized what he was doing, and with a dark frown, he retracted it.

Marco Bodt’s soul was a prize to behold. And it was also very dangerous.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of recent updates! I've been swamped since school reopened, not to mention incredibly stressed since this is an important year for me! Hope you liked it! I know there are some controversial topics discussed, and I'd like you to know I am fairly naive about these kind of things. If there's anything you'd like to correct (based on fact, rather than your own opinion) about what I said, do drop a comment!


	6. Lose My Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you know what you feel what you don't know what feeling is?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one, because I'm building it up. The next chapter will be a mini-nuclear bomb, but first I have to make it.

  "Do you trust me?"

Marco lifted his terrified gaze to Jean's much calmer one, and found his voice somewhere in the bottom of his rolling stomach. "Right now? Not really."

  "You don't have much of a choice," Jean laughed, and pushed Marco off the Bloukrans Bridge.

The freckled man screamed all the way down, and when the rope when taut, he bounced half the way back up, his feet barely skimming the surface of the boundary river between the Western and Eastern Capes of the Tsitsikamma region provinces. His shriek of abject terror turned into a holler of sheer ecstasy as the adrenaline rush overpowered his fear, and Jean grinned.

They had completed their 'Round the World' tour just a few days ago, finishing with the aurora borealis in Finland. Marco's breath was white puffs in the wintry air, but his eyes shone as brightly as the northern lights themselves as he took them in. Jean was hardly interested in the collision of solar wind and magnetospheric charged particles, his attention more invested in the luminous glow of Marco's soul as he partook of the Earth's natural beauty, one of the few left unblemished by humanity's advances.

Having finished Marco's 'Whole New World' spiel, Jean carelessly suggested doing some 'bucket-list' things. Most of it was the kind of stuff adrenaline-junkies would scramble to do: jumping out of airplanes, hang-gliding, etc. Now, they were in Southern Africa and bungee-jumping off the world's highest commercial bungee-jumping site. Or, well, Marco was. Jean did not share the anatomy of a human even if he visually reflected the appearance of one, which meant he didn’t feel what humans felt: cold, hot, pain, or adrenaline as Marco was experiencing now as it pumped through his blood vessels and substantially increased his heart rate. It also meant that he didn’t _feel_ , because human emotions were simply the results of chemical reactions performed by the brain and closely linked to the arousal of the nervous system under influence of hormones and neurotransmitters. Since Jean was basically a prehistoric, powerful, metaphysical being housed in what was otherwise a Ken doll (lack of genitalia included), he didn’t comprehend nor perceived emotion.

Which didn’t explain the myriad of what could only be called ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’ running just below the surface of his corporeal form. Jean felt them whenever he looked at Marco, most strongly when he was beholding Marco’s soul, or staring directly into his coffee colored eyes. It intensified, and it felt like electricity currents running rampantly from the tips of his extremities to converge in his chest cavity where he biologically would have his heart. Or so Jean comparatively imagined, since he had absolutely no idea what that felt like either.

He knew better than to share this with Armin, who would probably insist on making arrangements that would have another archdemon substitute him for the rest of the contract until Marco’s time was up. And Jean would have agreed. There was something infinitely bizarre going on with him where Marco was concerned. His soul was delectable and desirable, certainly, but was it really worth the trouble it was likely to cause? Looking at Marco now, reeled back from his bungee jump with his freckled cheeks rosily flushed and his doe’s eyes shining with euphoria, his soul beaming as brightly as a midnight sun… Jean would say it was.

  “Uh…Jean?”

Jean started, and could scarcely comprehend his outstretched arm, his fingers grazing a freckle-dusted cheekbone with what could only be referred to as ‘tendresse’. He sharply drew back his hand, brows furrowing together in a bemused frown and further piqued by his inability to understand why Marco’s face was turning ever redder until it was fairly crimson. The brunette mumbled and stuttered incoherently, and Jean decided he didn’t like the current atmosphere.

  “You had something on your face,” Jean quickly replied. It sounded lame even to his own ears, so he didn't want to think about how it sounded like to the human who was blushing far too much for Jean's comfort.

They exited Bloukrans Bridge without exchanging a word, and when the blonde slid a surreptitious glance at his contractor, the freckled man was still noticeably flustered. Color was riding high in his cheeks, heart rate as high as he’d been plummeting 200 meters towards Bloukrans River, fidgeting like there was a nest of fire ants in his pants. Jean sighed, knowing he’d have to resolve this somehow.

  “What’s the matter?” Jean struggled to keep the exasperation out of his voice, knowing it wasn’t Marco’s fault in the least. Damn his physical body for seemingly having a mind of its own.

  “Nothing!” Marco said a little too quickly. Jean arched an eyebrow, clearly picking up on the lie, and Marco sighed. “I’m just… not used to people voluntarily touching me.”

  “Here,” Jean gave Marco’s hair a quick and casual ruffle, mussing up the soft sable hair. The careless show of what humans commonly termed as ‘affection’ produced a startled yelp of surprise from the brunette.

Jean knew that Marco had a fairly average childhood, but his little sister was younger by five years and a spoilt little brat that demanded all his mother’s attention and held it with her doll-like cuteness. Whatever she wanted, she got. Whatever mess she created, the blame she pinned on Marco. So Marco was regarded as the failure of an older brother, the one who couldn’t protect his little sister, or meet expectations. His mother didn’t treat him coldly per se, but it was obvious where her affections lay.

  “So,” Jean asked briskly. “Where to next?”

Marco’s heart rate increased considerably, and another sideways glance showed that he had lost his flushed appearance and turned somewhat chalky in mien.

  “Jean,” Marco swallowed loudly, a sign of agitation. “Do you promise to be honest with me?”

The blonde frowned. He didn’t like where this line of questioning could go and would likely go. “That’s a tough question.”

  “Why?”

  “As the Devil, it’s my inherent nature to lie. But I’ve always been a maverick at ‘heart’, so…”

Marco gave him a blank look, then shook his head. Jean was either blatantly avoiding giving a proper answer, or wasn’t answering the question at all. “If I ask you a question, will you answer me honestly?”

  “Depends.”

  “I’m not going to live much longer, am I?”

Jean pulled to a complete halt, eyes widening and eyebrows fairly disappearing into his hairline.

  “I heard it,” Marco whispered. “The other night.”

A murderous rage drowned Jean as he recalled exactly _which_ night the freckled man was likely referring to.

A few nights ago, after a particularly rambunctious evening spent in an L.A. gay nightclub ironically referred to as ‘Bottom’s Up’, Eren had been dispatched to attend to Jean in Armin’s place. Said archdemon was preoccupied ‘subduing unruly and much too horny incubi’, so Jean had to deal with a much less subtle archdemon that was vehemently opposed to his current situation. And certainly wasn’t afraid to push their point across in loud volumes. Jean was too busy wrangling with the insubordinate, turquoise-eyed extramundane being, he only noticed Marco’s consciousness stirring too late. By the time he _did_ notice and forced Eren to vanish (cutting him off mid-sentence, which made Jean smirk in childish smugness), Marco was already awake and tottering into the living area of the hotel suite. His hair stuck up in tufts, his eyes cloudy with sleep but very much awake nonetheless.

  “Who were you yelling at?” Marco yawned, rubbing his eyes like a ten-year old roused out of bed at an unearthly hour.

  “No one,” Jean shrugged. “Just the telly.”

  “The ‘telly’,” Marco snorted at Jean’s British version of ‘TV’. “What’s on?”

  “Nothing now,” the blonde unfolded the length of his body from the sofa, where he’d reclined whilst dealing with a very defiant and mercurial archdemon. It wasn’t as if he could tell the freckled human that, so he lied. It came as easily to him as a fish takes to water. “Canada trashed US of A in ice hockey.”

  “Oh,” Marco murmured, utterly indifferent to the sport. “Are you coming to bed now?”

The phrase was so intimate, so suggestive, but Marco meant it innocuously. Platonically, even. Jean had yet to explain that he didn’t require sleep, but since he was there in the bed whenever Marco retired for the night, it was naturally assumed that he required beauty sleep as well.

  “Mm,” Jean assented, guiding the brunette back into the soft king-sized bed, hand lightly pressed against the small of the freckled man’s back.

The blonde had concluded that Marco heard nothing of great importance, but clearly he was wrong.

  “Tell me,” Marco said more forcefully, now. His eyes were clear windows to his soul, which fluctuated in trepidation. The dark, velvet irises dilated with restless unease. “How much longer? _Tell me, Jean._ _Please_.”

Jean hesitated. He could effortlessly lie, and tell him that he was going to live for a couple more months. But that couldn’t be further from the truth, and looking at Marco now, something told Jean that he knew as much. He knew he didn’t have much longer to live.

Squeezing his eyes shut in a sudden onset of what could only be called mental exhaustion from trying to play ignorant of the incorporeal clock hanging over Marco’s head, Jean sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and snapped his fingers.

They were no longer on a dusty road in South Africa, but rather a quaint little café in Copenhagen. The air was no longer arid, the sun no longer beating down on their heads such that you could fry an egg on their scalps. Instead, it was cool and sheltered in the small alcove off the street in Denmark’s most populated city and capital.

  “2 days and 14 hours,” Jean said so quietly, Marco nearly missed it. His voice was resigned, enervated even.

  “Oh.”

The news didn’t come as a groundbreaking shock to Marco, who had vaguely overheard bits of a shouting match between Jean and an unseen (likely a) non-human that had vanished before Marco could catch a glimpse of him (?).

  “… _wasting your time…”_

“… _convince me otherwise…_ ”

  “ _… anyone else can do…”_

“… _less than a week, and human time runs differently…”_

Less than a week. Marco knew that much, at least. But the more precise truth compared to his own curious estimates was a blow all the same. He didn’t struggle to breathe, didn’t panic. He just stared at his hands, folded in his lap.

Jean had his chin propped on his elbow, watching Marco carefully, waiting for a reaction more valid than a simple ‘oh’. The moon that was his soul wavered, and the lake over which it hung rippled some, tiny little waves reflecting the light it emanated. He was unnerved, of course. But he wasn’t clamoring for more, no sickly yellow or puke green hues tainting its marble white tincture.

  “I see,” Marco closed his eyes, coming to terms with it. “Then… how…?”

  “You’ll go peacefully,” Jean said a little too forcefully. He’d _see_ to it himself that he went peacefully. Painlessly. A soul like this didn’t deserve to suffer. Didn’t deserve what it had _already_ suffered.

  “In my sleep?” Marco’s voice was devoid of emotion, just a simple query, demanding facts for answers rather than pity or sympathy. Jean smiled a little. _Rare soul, indeed._

  “Yes,” Jean nodded. “if that is what you want.”

Marco stared out the window onto the street, where people of all sorts passed by, paying him no heed. If Jean had been one of the pedestrians, Marco was certain that he would do the same. He’d be more enchanted by that leggy brunette, or stylish blonde. He wouldn’t give a second glance to someone like him, dowdy and uninteresting. Freckled, dull and nothing special.

That was always the case with every aspect of relationships: friends, lovers, family. It was a reality Marco had long since given up on hoping to escape. It was his lot in life, and he was meant to deal with it.

 _God was in a bad mood when He made you_ , was a running jibe he’d suffered in the predominantly religious school he’d attended back when he was still living under the financial umbrella of his parents.

He was always relegated, outcasted, unwanted. But Jean… even if it was just to fulfill a contract, Jean seemed to delight in him. He didn’t try to get out of the contract, which had to mean _something_ , right? He was worth a little in his eyes? Even if it was the eyes of the Devil himself… a little was better than the nothing he’d always had. The thought gave him the courage he needed to voice the question he’d been nursing in the uncertain but hopeful ecesses of his heart for a while now.

Marco bit his lip, but his voice didn’t waver even if his tone was slightly hesitant. “Then can I ask for one more thing?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some incongruities, I know, but consistency was never my strong suit. 
> 
> Also, I changed the title of the fic because I remembered the lyrics of the song 'Something I Need' by OneRepublic, and it struck me as INCREDIBLY APPROPRIATE. Not to mention fucking catchy. Put up with me for a while more, I beg of you. And do drop a comment, you know I live for those. Especially the sweet ones that involve a lot of screaming and keyboard-smashing. Those are always delicious.


	7. Off The Ledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco makes a request that even he knows is outrageous, but will Jean give him what he wants? ...or what he needs?

Unfairly well-toned muscles rippled across Jean's evenly tanned and smooth back as he pulled off his T-shirt in one swift move. Now that his clothes were stripped away (except for his jeans, but his hands were getting to that), Marco could fully appreciate the sinewy but lithe body that Jean chose to occupy as a physical vessel. Why couldn't the Devil choose to be a balding, paunchy, middle-aged man with whiskers? Oh, right. Because Marco wouldn't be "comfortable" with that, as Jean insinuated. He was probably right, but Marco didn't venture to question it. He'd already asked for so much, sitting here on the huge bed in a five-star hotel suite, watching Jean as he unwititngly gave the drooling freckled man a striptease.

He himself was as naked as a newborn, but infinitely less impressive in terms of appearance. He had no washboard abs to speak of, no defined muscles anywhere at all. His whole body was erratically dusted with freckles, as if someone had taken to mind that he needed to look like a human version of a robin’s speckled egg. His knees were pulled up to his chest, arms clasped tightly around his shins in a fetal position, digging his toes into the bedspread. His nerves thrummed and vibrated with intense apprehension, wondering if this was really the right thing to do.

Of course it wasn’t. Who in their right mind would have requested such a thing?

But Marco wasn’t a man in his right mind. He was gay, he was abandoned by both friends and family, and to top it all off… he had a little over 15 hours left to live. It was hard to keep track of the time going by when you were constantly timezone-jumping, but Marco had a rough gauge on it, give or take.

“ _Will you sleep with me?”_

The innuendo-rich question had been phrased in the most peculiar of circumstances, by someone who wasn’t expecting anything in return. But Jean had defied his expectations. He always did, and like always, it brought a thrill of hope into Marco’s soul, the very thing he was offering Jean in exchange.

“Sure,” Jean shrugged as he drawled languidly, running the tip of his index finger over the rim of his espresso cup, tawny eyes unreadable. “But I’d rather we have some… foreplay, if that’s alright with you.”

Marco hadn’t understood what Jean meant by ‘foreplay’ then, but over the course of the next couple of hours, he did. It meant Jean taking Marco out on the pretense of a courtship. It meant Jean treating (as if he hadn’t been treating Marco for the last three months or so) Marco to dinner of sloppy but mouthwatering artery-cloggers at a diner in Philadelphia. It meant Jean taking Marco to watch a flick at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas. It meant Jean behaving like they were on their first date, like they were hormonal teenagers in high school.

It meant Jean handling Marco like he was Flora Danica chinaware: beautiful, fragile, expensive as sin. And Jean’s hand, warm as an ordinary human’s, clasped around Marco’s wherever they went, his amber eyes kind and sweet as caramel popcorn he’d fed Marco in the theatre. Jean’s lips on Marco’s, gentle and a little off to the side, the perfectly clumsy first kiss.

Marco had to remind himself several times over the course of the ‘date’ that it was all an act, a ruse, a simulation to soften him up for what was bound to be a simple yet cruel process of give and take.

But it was so easy to forget, so easy to believe that Jean was telling the truth when he looked into Marco’s eyes with those intoxicatingly exotic honey-colored irises and said he loved him.

So easy. Too easy.

Watching Jean now, as he peeled off his jeans to show his ‘manhood’ encased in Calvin Klein briefs, it still felt too real. Marco thought about pinching himself, but it wasn’t a dream.

 _Just a charade,_ Marco reminded himself, the thought jarring painfully in his happily delusioned mind. _Just play-acting. Not real. Never real._

Then Jean shucked off his briefs with unintentional grace, and faced Marco in all his glorious nudity, and the last shred of rational thought in the freckled man’s head positively _melted_.

His unmarked alabaster skin contrasted sharply with Marco’s dull, freckled body, and was stretched taut over ropes of whipcord mucles on what had to be the most perfect skeletal structure in human history… except Jean wasn’t human, and that didn’t explain his erection.

“Is that for real?” Marco inadvertently found himself asking, blurting out the embarrassing question without thinking.

Jean gave him a long, level look that had Marco increasingly uncomfortable. The freckled man was about to apologize when the blonde wrinkled his nose.

“Of course it is,” Jean sniffed, sounding mildly offended. “It’s about as real as the rest of my physical body.”

“How…” Marco didn’t have the heart to ask the rest of his question, fearing an answer.

“You completely ruined the mood, you twit,” Jean sighed, climbing into the bed. Marco unthinkingly inched backwards, away from the most perfect specimen of a human body he had ever come across. It made everything else he had ever seen pale in comparison to its magnificence: the Eiffel Tower, the Big Ben, the pyramids of Giza.

“I-I…” Marco spluttered when Jean reached out and swept a thumb lightly across his cheekbone, the touch igniting sparks under his skin and silencing the words that threatened to spill out of his mouth.

“Shh…” Jean murmured, bringing his face slowly closer, until Marco felt his eyes fluttering shut when all he could see was pale amber, and felt the soft pressure on his lips that brought about a wave of heat and pooled in his stomach.

He didn’t hear himself moaning when Jean’s hand latched on to the nape of his neck, didn’t feel anything but the need for _more,_ as Jean licked his lower lip and pressed past the guard of his teeth to flick his tongue against Marco’s own. The heat swirled in his gut, and pulsed lower, lower, ever lower and burned in his crotch.

He wasn’t aware that Jean had pushed him on his back, of collapsing on soft down pillows. All he knew was he wanted more, and his arms reached for the blonde, a whimper bubbling in the back of his throat. Jean obliged, pressing warm lips against Marco’s, then kissing a line from his jaw to the middle of his chest, right over the spot where his heart was nestled behind his ribs. His hands roamed down the sides of the freckled man’s body, and Jean internally marvelled at how someone could be _so freckled_. He could be a human map of the Milky Way system, the freckles constellations of stars, suns that burned in faraway galaxies. His ribs poked against his skin, a reminder that he was losing weight no matter how Jean interfered in maintaining the illusion of healthiness. He didn’t look, but he knew the spectral clock was ever there over Marco’s head, invisible to the groaning man under him, ominously counting down. He didn’t want to look, but he knew.

Marco wouldn’t live to see tomorrow’s dawn break.

He stubbornly ignored the morbid thought, and felt Marco buck underneathe him when his hand cupped the brunette’s balls, and his thumb stroked the length of the underside of his cock.

“Jean!” his name was wrung out of Marco in a gasp, and for some reason, it made the blonde open his eyes and pull away from the man’s chest, where he’d been teasing an erect nipple with his tongue.

He looked down at the writhing, sweating yet beautiful man, clearly trapped in desire for _him_ , and saw more. He saw the soul, ordinarily a gossamer white, but now the scarlet hue of a prostitute’s rouge. He hissed, unaccustomed to to the ethereal sight, and belatedly realized what was happening:

He was defiling the soul with _lust_.

He reared back, extricating himself from his position of straddling Marco’s hips, and the freckled man whined in confusion, velvet eyes clouded with need. A need he didn’t realize was corrupting his _own soul_.

Jean didn’t understand the dual tug that resonated in his upper torso and lower abdomen, twin sensations that struggled to pull him back towards Marco. But his mind was whirring, reeling away, and the gears shifting into place with comprehension. He couldn’t fulfill this request, not without undoing his original intention for making this contract. It would invalidate his whole purpose for it.

Yet… as the Devil himself, wasn’t it supposed to be his duty to defile it? To do what he was doing now?

He watched in what he imagined to be amazement as the soul wavered, the vermillion tincture fading into the rosy pink of a newborn’s skin, then finally back into it’s original milky white hue. Pure, as if Jean had never dyed it in the carnal desire of lust just moments ago.

“Jean?” Marco asked huskily, confusion eminent in his throaty voice.

The blonde lifted his gaze to look into the freckled man’s eyes, and saw the beginnings of mortified hurt in the dark espresso eyes, which began to clear of its wanton haze in what was probably a misunderstanding.

Worse still, Jean found himself yearning to dispel the distress that threatened Marco, and his fingers were stroking the length of the freckled man’s rounded jaw, gently rubbing the sensitive spot on his skull, just behind the curve of his ear.

The pain that gathered like stormclouds on the horizon on the brunette’s face vanished, replaced by an overwhelming relief that eased the taut sensation in Jean’s chest. The blonde didn’t fully fathom the reason as to _why_ his body reacted so strongly to this human’s actions. Perhaps it was a result of tying Marco’s consciousness to his own, or his obsession with the soul that had been offered in exchange for his companionship.

_Companionship. Not sex. This wasn’t in the contract._

_Pure souls are too rare to corrupt. It should be preserved._

_I am the Devil, it’s the whole purpose of my existence to defile it, to prove that humans are susceptible to sin._

_The only reason why I made the contract was because a pure soul is a treasure worthy of coveting._

“Jean?” Marco repeated, touching Jean of his own volition for the first time, his hands cupping the blonde’s face with a feather light touch, as if he were afraid of touching him. The hesitantly-made contact, the timid utterance of his name, drew Jean out of his inner debate.

He stared at Marco, conflicted and astounded by the feeling of it. As the Devil, as Satan, as the reason for the fall of mankind from grace, his sole purpose had kept his mind clear and focussed. _Internal conflict_ was something he had never experienced before, nor was it an experience had he ever imagined he would undergo.

It unexpectedly hurt, scraping the inside of his mind raw the more he mulled it over. He didn’t want to think about it anymore, didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to _hurt._

_It’s your impetus. Do it._

And Jean did.

Without any warning, he bent over and gave one long, salacious lick to the underside of Marco’s leaking erection. The freckled man’s back arched into a _C,_ and the yelp that escaped from his lips was resounded satisfyingly in Jean’s ears, reverberating through the core of his physical body and further stimulating his own erection.

_If I can’t feel, then what is this?_

Jean half-heartedly pursued the confounding matter in the smallest, most obscure corner of his mind, devoting most of his attention to the man beneath him. Marco had unconsciously seized ahold of his shoulders in the midst of an orgasm that wracked his body with heavy palpitations, brought about by a centuries’ worth of practiced sexual prowess in Jean’s skill set. He found that Marco could easily be brought to climax when affection was unrelentingly applied to the slit at the head of his cock, and pressure was gently but firmly exerted on the underside of his balls.

His index finger probed the tight ring of muscle around the closed entrance that he would penetrate in the very near future, and he experimentally inched the tip of his finger inside. Marco bucked and grasped Jean’s biceps, whimpering at the invasive sensation that burned uncomfortably.

“ _Shh_ …” Jean whispered, keeping his voice low and calming. “It’s okay, just relax.”

He worked his index finger in slowly, making sure to soothe the freckled man’s discomfort by laving his recovered erection with his adroit tongue. The walls of muscles inside Marco tightened down on the foreign intrusion that was Jean’s finger, and the blonde smirked as he curled the index finger down on where he’d approximated the most erogenous zone on the man besides his cock to be.

The tip of his index finger brushed against the bundle of sensitive nerves that was Marco’s prostrate, and the brunette fairly _shrieked_ in surprised arousal, precum beading at the head of his cock.

“Wh-what was that?” Marco gasped, chest heaving as he panted, heart racing madly.

Jean looked up at him, startled and momentarily pausing in his ministrations. “That was your prostrate. How can you not know…”

The blonde trailed off as Marco blushed furiously and averted his embarrassed gaze. _Oh_ , Jean realized.

_Not just a virgin in body, but in mind as well. Probably never even heard of gay pornography websites before. No wonder his soul is so damn pure. He doesn’t even know what corruption lies out there._

“I’m going to make you feel good,” Jean promised, smoothing the hair out of Marco’s dark eyes with his free hand, and pressed a light but firm kiss to his forehead. “But I’m not going to have sex with you.”

Marco looked up at him, chagrin and misery visible in every feature. He thought Jean was rejecting him and mistakenly believed that it was because he wasn’t _worthy_.

Jean internally snorted at the very idea, and gave Marco a wry smile. “It’s nothing to do with your ‘worth’, or your appearance. It’s just me. I’m choosing not to be a complete dickshit by taking your virginity just because it’s part of a contract.”

“But I—“

“You deserve so much better than me,” Jean murmured, half to himself, ignoring the baffling twist in his gut and the sourness at the back of his throat. “I’m not what you need.”

“But you’re what I want--!” Marco gasped as Jean removed his finger from inside him.

“Don’t,” Jean shook his head and silenced him with a kiss.

Marco didn’t—couldn’t, argue anymore, because Jean’s lips felt distractingly amazing on his, and his tongue was ridiculously skilled at dancing with his own clumsy one. The blonde’s hands ghosted over his freckled, contemptible body, and teased all of his erogenous zones except the one where he wanted Jean the most.

 _Needed_ Jean the most.

But the blonde ignored Marco’s mewled demands, and pulled both their straining erections together and pumped the two cocks with steady, even strokes that effectively erased all coherent thought from the brunette’s head.

The rest of the night went on like that, Jean taking Marco to peak after peak of ecstasy at a leisurely place, but never once taking him in the place where Marco desired him most. Both their bodies were covered in ribbons and ropes of drying white semen, and when Jean wrung the last orgasm out of Marco, it was a dry one that made the freckled man keen. He managed a shaky whisper, a single word that could have been easily mistaken for a simple exhalation. He breathed Jean’s name, and passed out in exhaustion.

Jean collapsed beside him, using his own bicep as a cushion for the brunette’s head, and pushed the locks that fell into his face back. Marco’s lips were swollen from Jean’s succouring, and they parted slightly as he relinquished control of his body to Morpheus, the mythical Greek god of dreams. Jean absently wondered what this purehearted man dreamed off, his gaze straying to the moon that was Marco’s soul in his chest.

Like before, the wine-red cast slowly faded back to its pearly white color, shade by beautiful shade. Jean marvelled at its recovery, its inability to be permanently stained by what he’d just experienced, the most base and basic of all sins. There was a possibility that it was because Jean hadn’t actually had sex with him, but did He not say that if you thought about it, it was as good as committing the act?

Yet Marco was a virgin in both body and mind. He didn’t know how sex actually worked between men, so he didn’t exactly _think_ about it.

 _This may or may not have been the worst decision I have ever made_ , Jean thought, a grin haunting the corners of his mouth. _It might even trump tempting the First Woman._

But Jean had no regrets, never believed in them.

 And so he watched Marco sleep, holding on to all modicum of rational thought as he helplessly counted down along with the phantasmal clock over Marco’s head. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes progressed into hours, and time that once seemed so painfully infinite to Jean was now deplorably short as it passed this innocent man by with no remorse.

The sky outside the hotel window lightened, the stars fading into invisibility as the sun emerged on the distant horizon, though it was not yet visible within sight. Darkness gave way to the greyish-pink potential of a new dawn, another cycle, another day. People would wake in another hour or two, when the sun had just begun to peek over the ridge of mountains yonder. They would putter about, getting ready to deal with another 24 hours of life, taking it all in stride, taking it all for granted. 

Marco remained asleep, no alarm clock to buzz and remind him in an annoying fashion that he had to deal with another miserable day. He slept peacefully, his freckled face untroubled by the world and its problems. Jean closed his eyes, pressing his lips to Marco’s forehead, curling his fingers gently in the hair at the nape of the brunette’s neck.

_Twenty more seconds._

He knew Marco wouldn’t hear it, and probably wouldn’t have believed it either. Hell, 13 weeks ago, he wouldn’t have believed it himself.

_Fourteen seconds._

Love is just a chemical reaction that translates into neurotransmitted thoughts. It’s not real. It’s just chemicals. Hormones. Nothing tangible, or worthy of belief. 

_Eight seconds._

Jean’s eyes, shut tightly, stung with an unfamiliar sensation, and he didn’t open them, not even as he registered with some disbelief the indisputable tears escaping his closed eyes. They tracked down his cheek, but he didn’t move an inch.

_Five seconds._

This is it. The contract is over. No more play-acting. No more pretending. No more lying to Marco.

_Three seconds left._

No more lying to himself. 

 _Two seconds left._  

The first light of sunrise peeked over the horizon outside their hotel window, and painted the sky in the same shades of pink that had tinted Marco’s soul just hours earlier. It was a breathtaking sight, not all that different the ones that had taken Marco’s breath away many times when he saw variations of it from diverse locations across the globe. It had taken Jean’s breath away just as many times, seeing his face light up like it had its own sun just below his skin.

But Jean didn’t budge to look at the dawning of a tomorrow Marco wouldn’t see. He didn’t move from where he lay beside Marco as he slept, embracing him in what could only be called a tender one, didn’t break his lips away from where they were pressed to his forehead. Not even when his own chest shuddered with sobs that he didn’t allow to escape. Not even when the small, inconsequential thought popped up that he shouldn’t be able to cry.

_One more second._

Jean kept his eyes closed, and his lips moved in a soundless declaration that echoed in what he now understood was his _heart_.

“I love you, Marco.”

The spectral clock vanished, and Jean didn’t move. Not when he felt Marco’s chest and shoulders rise one last time. Not when he felt Marco take his very last breath. Not when he felt Marco’s body stiffen and lose its warmth that was the essence and proof of his life.

He didn’t move, and neither did Marco.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updates! I've been swamped with schoolwork and whatnot. I hope you enjoyed the chapter and yes I'm a miserable fucking piece of shit who probably just made you cry or upset or sad. Go me! Drop me a comment about how much you hate me or still love me even though I don't deserve it. I hug you in consolation because honestly, writing this chapter actually made me just as unhappy.


	8. Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude: Jean does something moronic, and to say Armin is displeased is a massive understatement. But then again, when does Jean NOT do something stupid?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VERY short chapter, just to keep you lot from falling off the edge of your seats. LOVE YOU ALL.

  “You did _what?”_ Armin raised his voice to a half-shriek of incredulity.

Jean winced, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to get out of this one so easily. Slumped on his throne of calcified, writhing skeletons that had once been condemned humans, he slowly shed the skin he had worn for a little over three months. The corporeal form dissolved on his command, revealing and resuming his blindingly redoubtable silhouette. But out of preference or what was very possibly sentiment, he retained his undercut crop of bicolored hair.

  “Don’t shout,” Jean closed his eyes, preternatural gold with no hint of the ordinary white sclera and the black slit-like pupils. “I’m fully aware that what I did was ridiculous—“

  “Ridiculous doesn’t even begin to _cover_ the extent of your idiocy,” Armin hissed, losing his temper for the first time in what was probably five centuries. The last time he had gotten this angry, it was at Eren for relentlessly picking fights with Jean at every turn. That had been satisfying entertainment for the blonde, but now that he was suffering the brunt of it… it wasn’t quite as amusing.

  “What would you have me do, then?” Jean sighed, already tired of Armin’s lecture even though it was barely halfway into its prelude. Armin’s lectures could go on for a length of time that humans calculated to be _weeks_ , then he would give you dirty looks and a cold shoulder for months afterward until you were sufficiently contrite.

  “Put him in limbo, at the very least,” Armin rolled his eyes, shoving stray strands of nearly-gold hair out of his flinty sapphire eyes, huffing. He was still in his human veneer, clothed in a Savile Row suit and his shoulder-length hair half pulled back.

  “I’m not putting him in _any_ of the circles,” Jean lurched upright, back ramrod straight as he snarled in indignant fury. “He wouldn’t—“

  “Wouldn’t _what_?” Armin cut him off, unthinkingly forgetting his place, blue eyes glowing with a wrath that threatened to dematerialize under the pressure of his temper-fueled energy.

Jean caught himself at the very last minute, realizing the sheer risibility of what he was about to say in retort.

 _He wouldn’t like it there,_ Jean swallowed the foolish words.If they had left his lips, if he had not exerted some sense of self-control at the very last minute, Armin would have gotten a second wind.

  “He doesn’t belong there,” Jean said lamely, knowing it was a flimsy excuse. At least it didn’t’ sound as injudicious as ‘he wouldn’t like it there’.

  “And _where_ do you suppose he belongs?” Armin’s voice was as cool and sharp as chiseled ice, knuckles rapidly turning white as he gripped his ever-present Moleskine. Jean knew he kept every infinitesmal detail in that thing, from minutes of their bi-moon meeting to his to-do list.The tawny-eyed blonde didn’t doubt that Armin kept a grocery list in there for his physical manifestation’s nutritional intake and to keep up the ruse of normalcy in the human world.

  “Just leave his placement to me, alright?” Jean growled, patience wearing thin. It wasn’t very flexible nor elastic to begin with. “I’ll deal with the soul as I see fit.”

“That’s what bothers me, Jean,” Armin said tightly, resignation pronounced in his delicate human features. “I’m not sure if you know what’s fit for ruling anymore.”

 


	9. Only Die Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean is unsure of what to do with Marco's soul now that he has it... then someone else makes the decision for him.

That was all Marco registered, as he slowly gained consciousness of his existence in a place that clearly wasn’t earthly. All four senses besides sight were sluggishly awakened, each lethargic and reluctant to investigate his surroundings. But they did, and came up frighteningly short.

There was not a trace of moving air to caress his skin with its ghostly touch, nary a whisper of noise that his ears could pick up on, no scent to clue in his nose, and not even a sour taste of a stale morning mouth.

Marco was startled into complete awareness of the environment he was in, and realized he couldn’t even open his eyes because he had nothing to see with. Now edging towards full-fledged panic, he probed the nerves of his own body… and felt absolutely nothing, because there was nothing to feel with.

He was plummeting in absolute shock with the speed of someone rushing headlong at the ground after jumping off the top of one of the Petronas towers, until he abruptly recalled with a clarity that only slowed the descent into shock.

_Oh, right. Dead._

He contemplated his death like one would down a particularly bitter cocktail, except this was an emotional concoction of consternation, placidity, confusion and a dash of concern. He didn’t know how long it took for him to completely swallow and digest the idea, accepting it as a reality of what a blackhole might look like on the inside. A void, a darkness that was equal parts terrifying and peaceful.

Bit by bit, the fragments of his last moments caught up to him, like a movie reel being played back in poor quality. Backlights flickering uncertainly, shifting in color tones as the mood changed, black spots blotting out the peripheral edges of the scenes that unfolded. But Marco remembered, and he _felt_.

Felt Jean’s calloused, warm hands exploring every inch of his body with the kind of devout reverence you’d see in the eyes of a pious man in a place of worship. Felt Jean’s fingers kneading affection into his erogenous zones, unrelentingly sadistic in his quest to bring the freckled man over the edge again, and again, and again. Felt Jean’s surprisingly soft lips pressed against own, searching and inviting his tongue to dance, silencing his cries of protest for more than just touching.

Felt Jean’s hand at the nape of his neck, fingers curling into the hairs there, lips pressed against his forehead as he paddled in the shallow waters of sleep, straddling the boundaries of the waking and the not.

Jean had mouthed three distinct, unmistakable words against his forehead, and it was the very last thing he recalled before he lost the energy to keep fighting boundaries between the only world he once knew, and the one he knew now.

Marco felt a shiver of pure, unadulterated joy, tinged pessimistically with a suggestion of deceit. The niggling allusion of doubt dyed the bright joy in its dull hues of ugly vomit-yellow and green. It spread, drowning out the hopefulness entirely until all he could think was thoughts that only made the ache louder.

After all, Jean was literally the Devil incarnate; would it be so surprising that he would lie about it? Pass it off as giving Marco the tender moment between lovers that he’d always secretly desired?

It would undoubtedly hurt, but it wouldn’t break his heart. It couldn’t.

After all, what’s there to break when the heart’s already dead?

* * *

 Jean folded his second pair of three-fingered hands behind his spiny back, the first pair pressed against the smooth, falcated obsidian wall. To the lesser eye, one might perceive that he was simply fondling an opaque black crystal that was installed in the middle of an empty chamber, perhaps an absentminded tic. But it was more than that.

Jean shut his eyes, inhaling the faintest scent of cinnamon, musk and vanilla. He channeled energy into having a gander at the inside of the oblong sculpture, searching the void within for… _there._

Marco’s soul, an aquiline sphere that could have been a dead ringer for a full moon on a cloudless night, floated idly in the finite abyss.

He was conscious.

Jean reared back, severing the connection that would have tapped into Marco’s awareness and alerted him to his presence. The former blonde did not look forward to the inevitable barrage of stereotypical questions that followed such a phenomenal transition.

_Where am I?_

_What’s going to happen to me now?_

_When is this going to end?_

Jean considered his answers, and correspondingly his options. What was he going to do? Armin had been… somewhat right when he had yelled that Jean wasn’t being deliberate or circumspect when he had refused to corrupt Marco’s soul and brought it into the most inappropriate place for such a pure artefact. There would undoubtedly be backlash from such an irresponsible aciton, but right now…

Jean reached back towards the crystal that was Marco’s prison, and gently nudged at Marco’s soul. The response was comical, the soul startled and frightened by the abrupt disturbance. He had probably interrupted Marco’s wandering postulations about his current situation, and the idea brought a hint of a smile to Jean’s lips, which concealed a double row of serrated teeth.

 _Marco?_ Jean cautiously propelled the thought in Marco’s direction.

The relief that his soul emanated was fairy palpable, his response immediate and shadowed by unmitigated confusion. _Jean? Is that you?_

 _It’s me_ , Jean took care to send reassuring signals in the thought, clinging to the warm delight Marco radiated like a security blanket. In that moment, he utterly forgot all about Armin’s warnings and scoldings.

  _Where…what is this place?_ Marco didn’t sound frightened; he wasn’t, now that he was assured that Jean was somewhere nearby, even if he couldn’t see him. _Is this Hell?_

Jean winced. _Well, techincally you are_ in _Hell, but… this is sort of like a isolation cell._

Marco was halfway between bemused and rueful when he finally replied. _Does that mean I’m a particularly extreme case?_

The thought did occur to Jean, and he was inclined to agree; after all, it was the truth that Marco’s soul did pose as a polar opposite to almost all the souls that he’d previously encountered. That automatically made his case an extreme one, so to speak.

  _Sort of_ , Jean chose his words carefully, phrasing it delicately. _You’ve yet to receive Judgement, so it’s not been specified as to where you’ll go._

Marco seemed to ponder this, and if he had a corporeal body he would have shrugged. He’d surrendered to his fate a long time ago, accepting an eternity of Hell as penance. Jean would disagree, but he couldn’t very well tell him that.

  “Sir?”

Jean instinctively drew back from the crystal that was now Marco’s “cell”, and narrowed his multiple pairs of eyes at the lesser demon that had dared to intrude.

  “What?” Jean scowled, baring the slightest hint of his teeth in a show of annoyance. It was unfair, he knew in the corner of his mind, to vent his frustration on an unwitting subordinate, but seeing this succubus reminded Jean of Armin and his tireless lectures. The steam had to go _somewhere_.

  “You’ve been summoned.”

Jean’s scowl darkened. “Get Reiner or one of the others to attend to it. I’ve got better—“

  “By an angel, sir,” the succubus supplied, effectively cutting off Jean’s protests.

Annoyance morphed into unequivocated hatred; eons of enduring the humiliation of a scarred back where wings of pure light once extended from and the pain that would never fade from the shame of falling from His grace gave rise to that.

He slashed at the air in front of him, creating a rip in the space that contained a light that would have blinded the ordinary human. Jean merely squinted, before deciding it was too much hassle to stare an archangel directly in the face. He settled for looking disinterestedly to his left, where Marco’s soul was contained in the obsidian pillar.

  “ _You have a soul that does not belong where it is now,_ ” Raziel was infuriatingly straight to the point, and a lesser man would have despised him for his tactless lack of preamble. Well, Jean could probably meet the criterion of a ‘lesser man’, so…“ _Surrender it._ ”

  “It’s contractually mine,” Jean hissed. “Signed and sealed in blood.”

  “ _And what would you do with it?_ ” There was a hint of condescension and dislike in Raziel’s usually toneless, inhuman voice. In the words of humans, it sounded like ten choirs singing at the top of their voices, speaking the same words all at once in terrifying unsion. “ _Force it to spend eternity in the filthy pits where it does not belong?”_

  “What I do with it is entirely my prerogative,” Jean growled, clenching all his fists. “Back off, Raziel.”

  “ _The soul’s purity warrants a second chance,_ ” Raziel informed Jean coolly. “ _That is His judgement. And you will comply, as you always have.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured I owed you all a little something. It's short (sorry) but this is the most I can give right now. I hope you all liked it!


	10. One Killing Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco is alone, and Jean is upset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short filler, don't expect anything spectacular.

Marco reached out blindly, crying out Jean’s name into the resounding darkness when he felt his presence vanish from the peripheral edges of what he now knew as his isolation cell.

It was laughable that the source of nightmares and terror and conflict among many would be a source of comfort and happiness for Marco. As if he weren’t already enough of a maverick, to top it all off he sought solace and peace in the company of the Devil. His parents would have an apoplectic fit if they knew what they’re son had gotten into after they’d denounced him.

Meanwhile, Marco held on tightly to the fleeting warmth that Jean’s presence had offered. It was the only reassurance he had now that everything was going to be okay, or some semblance of okay. He was floating in a void that seemed to stretch into infinity, but from what Jean had said, it could easily be assumed that it was just an illusory abyss. There had to be an end, as there always was, specifically with things that involved being happy.

So he querulously set out to find the boundaries of his chasm, determined to at least seek out a window or some sort of wall that would be the most solid thing he could feel right now. He ventured in a single direction, growing steadily more determined and optimistic that yes, there would be a wall that could provide solid, if dismal, comfort.

But there wasn’t.

It eventually dawned on Marco that his very awareness after death defied all logic and the premises of science. It would hardly be a surprise now that after death, all that occurred would defy physics as well.

_What is this?_

_Don’t touch it!_

_Aw, c’mon. Don’t be such a pissbaby._

Marco frowned (if souls could frown, he was doing it). He could sense the faint presence of two beings beyond his prison. They sounded muffled, like hearing an argued conversation through a thick wooden door when you were trying to focus on a history class at the end of a long school day. He unconsciously sought the source of the voices, thinking that if he could somehow reach in the direction, there would be a border he could cross so as to escape this never-ending darkness. The abyss, though seemingly calming and not altogether that terrifying in its boundless space and shadows, tended to pervade him with unwanted thoughts borne of overthinking recent events that had transpired between a certain someone and himself. He needed a distraction, and this was it.

_Aren’t you curious?_

_No!_

_Don’t be such a wimp, Bertl._

_I’m not a wimp! He’ll be pissed if he finds us here!_

The voices became more distinct and clear: one was curious, goading, the other much more cautious and nervous about the whole situation. They clearly weren’t supposed to be here. And Marco had no doubt in his mind that the “he” the more hesitant one was referring to, was none other than Jean.

It had slipped his mind, as he was wont to do when he was relishing the fleeting and ephemeral moments of contact with the blonde, that Jean was no mere human. He was a demon. The biggest, most powerful and the master of them all. And when Marco _did_ remember, it made him… retract. Just a little.

Okay, maybe a lot.

Why wouldn’t he? Jean was immortal, probably omnipotent and to him, Marco was probably just another soul in the sack. Another check on the to-do list.

_I love you._

No. Marco stubbornly pushed the persistent thought away, with little success.

 _I love you_.

It didn’t echo so much as tingled, because Marco had felt the unmistakable words being shaped against his forehead.

Emotion warred against reason, and Marco was lost in the internal conflict between his heart and mind, until a jarring presence startled the crap out of him. It materialized much in the same way that Jean did, a peripheral existence, a shadowy apparition that was faint, but there nonetheless.

_Is anyone there?_

Marco got an impression of someone masculine, bass-voiced and incongruously cheerful. He hesitated to reply, but the urge to answer and keep the company was too great. _Who are you?_

 _Oh, cool! You can call me Reiner. Who are_ you?

The enthusiastic reply was nearly deafening, echoing sharply in the confines of Marco’s prison. He pulled back a little, fright curbing his desire for amity. When he didn’t provide a rejoinder to ‘Reiner’s overly-chipper query, the demon pressed harder and Marco yelped as the presence grew from barely perceptible to compellingly loud. _Helloooooo?_

Marco flinched. He wanted quiet, soothing. Not ear-piercing and obtrusive. He wanted Jean. His gentle baritone, his calming presence. The difference between Jean and this Reiner, was like the difference between a candle-light and a floodlight. But some light was better than none at all, Marco supposed.

 _I’m Marco,_ he ventured with some trepidation.

 _Cool,_ the response was noncommital. _What’re you doing in there?_

 _I’m not entirely sure,_ if Marco had shoulders, he would have shrugged uneasily. _Maybe I screwed up._

 _Nah,_ Reiner chuckled. _If you screwed up, you’d be joining us in one of the circles. Jean probably has some grand scheme in mind for you._

The reminder that Reiner was  demon, like Jean, and the mention of “joining us in one of the circles” was enough to make Marco hesitate once more. Reasonably so. Who wouldn’t when they were confronted by one of their potential and/or probable tormentor for all eternity? He didn’t need an explicit description of what most likely went down in the circles of Hell; he’d never read Dante’s Inferno (who wants to spend precious hours of their already-miserable life reading something that was both depressing and probably woefully accurate about their own afterlife?), but he got the main gist of it. Hell was _not_ a happy place.

_You still there, Polo?_

Polo?

 _Yes,_ Marco was somewhat resigned by now. He had no clue what was going to happen to him now, but whatever it was… he both deserved and accepted it. He had surrendered to fate when he was alive; there wasn’t much difference in doing the same when he was already dead.

 _So what are you?_ Reiner asked, curious. Marco could sense him probing further, looking for Marco, feeling him out. _You must be someone awfully special to have—_

Reiner abruptly shut up then, and Marco felt the surprise that had cut him off, mingled with notes of disbelief. The gossamer touch of a secondary presence disappeared altogether, and Marco was torn between wishing it hadn’t and being glad it had.

 _Let’s get the fuck out of here_.

Reiner’s voice no longer echoed with terrifying clarity in his prison cell, but instead was muffled as it had been before he intruded upon Marco’s abyss. He sounded upset, and his voice gradually grew more muted and distant as he was talking to his companion, until Marco couldn’t hear it anymore. He was leaving.

Then Marco was alone once more in the twilight that had no beginning and no end.

But unlike when Jean left, called away by some unseen subordinate, Marco didn’t feel lonely. He just felt… relieved. Instead of dissipating the loneliness as he’d assumed Reiner would by interacting with him, he just made Marco uncomfortable, like he was being trampled by a horde of fanatical buffalos, or being face to face with an interrogation lamp.

He curled up on himself, drifting, drifting. There was nothing to do but that, in the empty void that Jean had placed him in. No window to look out of, no door to unlock, no wall to lean against, no floor to lie down on.

If it was his fate to spend the rest of eternity in this void, this black hole… then so be it.

* * *

“No!”

Jean slammed a clenched fist on the ivory-carved table, scattering stationery. Armin looked up from his fucking Moleskine, only mildly concerned. He arched an eyebrow at his Master, the first of the Fallen, the one whose sole purpose was to herald the downfall of humanity. The one who never found greater joy than in bringing out the worst in mankind, to watch them tear each other apart like cannibals and strut around like fools, thinking they were superior to beasts.

And where a proud, powerful entity once stood, all Armin saw was a being reduced to something conflicted, _weak_ … something as fallible as a human. It was a frightening sight, and Armin despised it more than he abhorred Eren picking fights with Jean. If it was feasible, he would have hurled this Marco’s soul at Raziel without a second thought.

But Jean had gone to great length and taken extra measures to secure this unadulterated soul in an impenetrable crystal. Whether it was to keep this Marco in, or to keep others like Armin out, none could guess. One thing, however, was for certain: no demon in Hell except for Jean, to Armin’s knowledge, had directly interacted with Marco Bodt. There was no saying what this human was like, what he meant to Jean, how he managed to endear himself so tremendously to the King of Hell so that Jean exploded with such unchecked temper as he had never done before.

It was unthinkable, seeing someone so all-powerful brought to his knees by what he once sneered at to be ‘simple chemical reactions’. Armin was familiar with emotions, of course: lust, greed… but never something so wholesome as love. It wasn’t an emotion you ran into while going about business in Hell.

And watching Jean now, frustrated and afflicted by malaise, at the mercy of ‘simple chemical reactions’, Armin seriously hoped that this ‘love’ was an emotion that would continue to stay out of Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love kisses hugs bye bye don't kill me don't hate me I'm sorry
> 
> EDIT: by the way, for those of you hoping for a happy ending... hop on the next train. This one is rushing headlong into a herd of unhappy buffaloes.


	11. World Full of People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco is reincarnated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been on hiatus and out of commission for a really long time, and I apologise to all my loyal readers and friends because you have shown me such great support and I've been a big asshole procrastinating this chapter.

_“This is for the best,”_ Raphael’s demeanor was all practicality and reason. But his words were an uncharacteristic attempt to console Jean, who in turn, looked uncharacteristically distraught as he reluctantly slipped the shoebox-sized obsidian block through the portal. “ _You know that._ ”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Jean snarled, eyes flinty and back stiff. He doesn’t look at Raphael, not directly. His gaze lingers on the crystal even long after it has disappeared through the gleaming circle that acts as a window between Heaven and Hell.

“ _Don’t let human emotion distract you from your purpose_ ,” Raphael admonished. If angels could frown, he would have.

“Are you sure you should be telling me that, Mr. Save-the-humans?” Jean snorted humorlessly. “I see you’ve been keeping in touch with Azazel.”

Raphael didn’t say anything, his pupil-less eyes cast downwards as he regarded the oblong object that contained what was invariably the most untainted soul to walk the earth in at least two millenia. It looked so humble, so undistinguished, but Raphael knew better than to trust the judgement of simple sight. Thomas, one of the Twelve, had made that error. He’d been forgiven, of course, by His grace. This soul was no exception to it. It would receive a second chance, another life, another body.

He cradled in his arms and prepared to seal the portal when the stifled sob made him look at his former brother.

Shock was a very foreign thing to Raphael, a creature that was devoid of the consciousness humans so frequently exploited. It was an expression of a human biology, a reaction to things or events that startled them. But Raphael wasn’t human, so describing _his_ reaction to what he saw could only be best described as “shock”.

Lucifer Morningstar, hailed as the greatest evil to ever befall mankind, the source of all their misfortunes and sins, the harbinger of their annihilation… was in _despair_.

Raphael had been witness to humans at their most vulnerable—when they experienced tragedy, hurt, betrayal, misfortune… chemical reactions would be triggered. More often than not, humans dealt with this reaction by what Raphael perceived as venting by crying. Copious amounts of salty water leaking from the tear ducts, overproduction of mucus that more often than not clogged up their nasal pipes…

If empyrean beings could _feel_ and physically manifest those feelings… well, Jean was coming very close to doing that right now.

“ _I’m sorry, my brother_ ,” Raphael sighed, cradling the obsidian crystal that Jean apparently harbored these _feelings_ for. He was made such that he was sympathetic to human souls, much like the one Jean did not want to relinquish into his charge, but he was certain that if Jean could express such a feat… he was a little human. So Raphael could spare a little sympathy for him. “ _I will see to it that he is happy._ ”

He closed the portal, and what he didn’t see nor hear, was Jean’s whispered oath.

“And so will I… with me.”

* * *

 

 Marco is 14 months old.

He can walk, albeit without grace and fluidity. He frequently stumbles and trips over absolutely nothing at all, and bursts into loud tears and wails the house down. His mother will hurry over and pick him up, soothing the hurt away, kissing the tears away, patting the frustration away… to very little avail. She will walk him, rock him, feed him and do everything in her power to calm him down.

It is only when Marco catches sight, with his dulled vision and fuzzy cranial processing, the man standing in the corner of his nursery, with eyes like the honey Mama sometimes feeds him, and funny hair, that he stops and starts to coo.

His Mama is frazzled by then, and not to mention exhausted. She will put him in his playpen, surrounded by stuffed toys, and goes back to whatever mundane house chore she put down to attend to him.

Marco doesn’t care. He is more interested in the strange man. He waves his chubby little fists at him, giggling as he comes closer, then squealing with delight as the man picks him up high over his head. The man seems to smile, and cuddles with Marco for a bit.

Marco doesn’t mind, because he doesn’t smell strongly of the perfume that makes Marco’s nose itch terribly like Mama does. He feels perfectly content in this man’s arms, and slowly falls asleep.

* * *

  Marco is ten years old.

He is in the Little League, their star pitcher and third strongest batter. He scores three runs and a homerun in today’s game, and goes home with a bounce in his step, joy in his heart. He can’t wait to tell his parents about the game, and how well he did. He can’t wait to see the pride in their eyes as he elaborates how he scored the homerun during dinner, and how he struck three out without slipping up.

He pushes open the door, and his bright mood is instantly dimmed by the darkness that awaits him. The lights in the house are off, and the stagnant air suggests that no one is home. He doesn’t bother to call out for his mother or father. He knows where they are; it is no secret to him that his parents fulfil only their most fundamental parental obligation towards their child. PTA meetings, baseball games, sports day… as far as Kamille and Hank Bartley are concerned, they’re unnecessary and a waste of time. They sign his permission slips for field trips, of course, and Kamille sometimes remembers to make Marco lunch (although her cucumber and mayo sandwich make Marco wish she didn’t). And you can’t really call them terrible parents… but they’re not _great_ parents either.

They disappear for days at a time, and the older Marco is, the longer they stay away from the house. He doesn’t know where they go, or what they do. He’ll know they’re gone when the house is still, and there’s a note and some money on the counter. Often, the money goes into the hundreds; the Bartleys are fairly well-off, but mostly the amount is a precaution for the length of time they’ll be away.

He wishes he could say that he’s used to it, and the sad part is that he isn’t. He wants his parents to welcome him home or lecture him about coming home late, to scold him for poor grades or praise him for good ones, to foist love and affection on him. He is starting to understand that it is too much to ask for.

He dumps his dirty slacks into the washing machine, takes mac n’cheese out of the cupboard and starts to make his own dinner. Because the house is eerie when it’s quiet, he turns on the TV, flicking through channels listlessly while the water boils until he finds a loud comedy that fills in the equally loud silence.

He eats his dinner, does his homework, and falls asleep on the couch.

He wakes up the next morning in his own bed, too lethargic to wonder how he even got there, tucked in and alarm clock blaring.

* * *

Marco is sixteen, and a sophomore in high school.

He is captain of the baseball team, and although it is less glamorous than being quarterback on the football team, he is proud of his achievement nevertheless. His grades are above average, and he has friends to hang out with instead of going back to an empty house.

He almost never sees his parents, and when he does, it’s usually when they’re on their way out again. They’ll leave money on the kitchen island counter, in his bank account when he finally gets a debit card, in cheques by the telephone when they don’t have cash. On his sixteenth birthday, there’s a navy Mercedes-Benz in the driveway and the keys to it next to his pillow. He doesn’t bother to mention that he hasn’t gotten his driver’s license yet.

He tries to avoid going home at twilight—he finds it’s the most depressing time of the day to go back to an empty house, the furniture silhouetted by the setting sun, furniture no one uses except for him—so he always politely rejects his friends’ invitations for dinner.

Marco looks forward to school, which makes his attitude a sharp contrast to that of his peers. It’s easy to see why, though. The trek towards No.6 Trost Lane is lonely, and so is going about dinner and homework in a house that no one really lives in.

Does that still make it a home, then?

“Marco?”

He turns around, startled out of his gloomy reverie. There is a girl standing behind him, stance pensive and hesitant, of petite build and fair skin. Her eyes are livid-colored, and her raven hair is tied into two loose pigtails on either side of her face. She’s pretty, in an elfin sort of way. Marco thinks her name is Lydia, or—

“I’m Mina,” she smiles up at him, just a trace of nerves lighting her bruise-colored eyes. “From your history class.”

“Oh, right,” he scratches the back of his head sheepishly. No wonder she seems a little familiar.

“I was wondering…” her front teeth worry her bottom lip, and then she inhales deeply. “ _IfyouwanttomaybeIdon’tknowhavedinnerwithme_?”

Marco takes a few minutes to process what she just said, while she stands there, fidgeting and blushing harder and harder.

He wants to put her out of her misery—the poor girl looks so nervous, she might spontaneously combust if he doesn’t give her a reply, and soon. He smiles, not entirely sure of what he’s getting himself into, and says yes.

Her answering smile is bright and brilliant, and it lights up her whole face like fireworks on 4th of July. She giggles, and they head towards town together, conversation awkward at first but slowly flourishing as they commiserate about terrible teachers and horrid school rules like 8AM classes.

That night, he goes to sleep thinking about Mina and her livid eyes and chirpy laughter.

That night, he dreams of a stranger with exotic ochre eyes and a sad smile. 

* * *

 

Marco is twenty-three, and fresh out of Shinganshina College.

He and Mina are still together, although Mina goes to a different college over in the next county. They spend weekends together, telling each other about dormitory life (Marco’s, because he couldn’t stand living in an empty house any longer) and other various excerpts of the time they spent apart. They have picnics on the green, with Marco idly making her flower crowns while she talks about how her crazy senior (someone called Hanji that no one knows is a girl or a boy) nearly ruined the science wing with their experiments. They eat soggy sandwiches, drink lukewarm Coke and watch the sun set on the horizon. The world is peaceful, with sounds of children laughing and playing, adults gossiping and talking all around them in low volumes. They pack up when it gets dark, or sometimes lie on their backs with their fingers intertwined to squint for stars. More often than not they give up on the stargazing and just go back to their respective residences because the city lights obscure the flickering stars. They kiss before they part ways, sometimes chaste, sometimes passionate.

His parents sponsored his way through art school (it was an unexpected choice, but Marco has no fondness for the rigors of the corporate world), and cut the reins when Marco graduates. He takes out a loan, rents a studio apartment, and asks Mina to move in with him.

Their daily life together is a little clumsy at first, jigsaw pieces struggling to find each other’s complementing pieces. They settle into a routine, and Mina goes to work at Survey Corporation from nine to five while Marco stays at home and paints portrait after portrait of a dark shadow with heart-breakingly lonely tawny eyes.

Mina asks who he’s painting, and the answer is at the edges of his mind, frustratingly just out of reach.

He shrugs, and continues painting.

* * *

 Marco is thirty.

He asked Mina to marry him when they were twenty-six, after a small gallery showing he titles “Something I Need”. All thirteen portraits of the stranger he painted with near-obsession. They vary in poses, in stances. But their mood is always the same: lonely, unhappy, miserable. Finishing each one left him feeling drained, exhausted. But every night he dreams of the same stranger, whose touch feels like fire on his skin, whose voice is a distant memory fogged by a cloud he can’t push aside. It fills him with a desire to make it a reality, to recreate this person. He does it the only way he knows how: with oils, posters, acrylics and watercolors on a canvas.

Mina sometimes chides him for it, and Marco gets the inkling that she is jealous. After all, in the years they haven’t been together, he has never so much as even sketched her. It escalates into fights that end with tearful shouts and slammed doors.

Mina said yes to marrying Marco, surrounded by the portraits of the stranger Marco chooses to paint over her.

They have a girl. She is a near carbon-copy of Mina, with eyes more gray than brown and not a hint of freckles. Marco loves her, and swears not to do what his parents did. He goes to PTA meetings, dance recitals, end-of-term teacher conferences. Mina doesn’t, too busy with work. He cooks dinner for her when Mina runs late, makes sure she doesn’t weasel out of homework and tucks her in every night. Little Marie loves her Daddy, and declares it everyday with the gusto and pride of a four year old. He laughs, touched, and blows raspberries on her stomach everytime she does.

When Mina breaks her promise to watch Marie dance lead in her studio’s rendition of _Casse Noisette_ , Marco loses his patience. He yells at her, and she yells back. She says someone has to bring home the bacon, since people are losing interest in his art, because all he does is paint the same thing. She says he loves the person in the paintings more than he loves her.

He doesn’t deny it.

The next day, she files for a divorce and custody of Marie.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed that my writing style has changed (I previously wrote in very descriptive past tense; I now write in present and keep it succinct and brutally short). It's probably because I've been reading a lot of stuff that's written in present tense, so... I'm easily influenced.
> 
> AND NOW: back to the hiatus.


	12. A Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco gets used to a life alone again, but he's not entirely alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am an unworthy little shit, and I'm sorry. I finished my exams over a week ago, and my dad whisked my family away on an impromptu vacation like two days after the last paper. I just got back yesterday morning and was too exhausted to do much else but roll around in bed reading johnlock, destiel, merthur and stucky fan fiction.
> 
> I know, I know. I'm a little shit. Or maybe a big diarrhoea.

Marco didn't get custody.  
  
It didn't come as much of a surprise, since Mina was the one who could better afford their daughter's current lifestyle. There was some contention regarding Mina's ability to care for her, seeing as she was a full-time career woman who didn't even have the time for her daughter's ballet recital. But her assurance that Marie would go to the best private school and live with a trustworthy housekeeper had the court climbing aboard her train of reasoning, as opposed to Marco's limited resources that wouldn't do much for their daughter besides having family to come home to everyday. So, Marco got weekends with Marie, and his promise to see her again that very weekend and whenever she wished placated her somewhat, as Mina tugged her away.  
  
The first few weekends were times Marco carefully filed away for treasuring, before Marie realized the predicament that had befallen her parents, before she realized the brutal reality that Mommy and Daddy didn't love each other anymore.  
  
Then all too soon, Marie grew cynical and withdrawn. She sulked whenever Mina dropped her off at his doorstep, preferring to shut herself away in her room with the internet at her disposal, emerging only for food or to go home. A year after Marco's divorce, Marie began throwing tantrums to get out of visiting Marco on weekends altogether, choosing instead to spend it with her flashy new toys that cost more than Marco's monthly income. iPhones, iPads, a lot of i-somethings that Marco was clueless about except that they were more important than he was to his little girl. But she wasn't his little girl anymore, and those days of random declarations of 'I love Daddy best' and proudly drawn portraits in crayon were over.  
  
Marco accepted her rejection with less hurt than he'd anticipated, and loathed himself for it. The bitter acceptance was just another in a long, long string of other acknowledgements he had come to make that he would never be the most important person in someone's life. Where his parents had been concerned, their affairs were more important than their only child. Where his friends had been concerned, they had other friends to call up before Marco was even considered for an invitation. Where Mina had been concerned, work had taken precedence. Where Marie had been concerned, her daddy was less important than the wonders of a life without him.

Not him. Never him. There would always be someone, something more important.

Even his art no longer bestowed relief on his ever-growing pile of reasons to be miserable.

His art failed to provide the usual catharsis for his frustration of recalling but not quite knowing a tawny-eyed stranger. If anything, it antagonised him even more. It didn't help that Marco could never get the shade of his eyes exactly right. It was like imagining something with perfect clarity in your head, only to lack the aptitude to portray it with equal clearness. He had broken countless brushes, upset paint bottles, ripped canvasses. Sometimes he cried, only to get more infuriated, and the cycle would repeat all over again. 

It was a name that ghosted across the tip of his tongue, leaving behind a bitter taste that couldn't be removed by consuming food or water; words without a voice that echoed in the hollow confines of his sleep; a touch that couldn't be felt, yet it was warm and comforting.

He wanted a distraction, badly: alcohol was too tedious to tend to in the morning after; drugs were a habit Marco was too afraid to pick up; running away to another country wasn't financially plausible; exercise was tiring to even think of, but it was within his capabilities.  
  
So he went jogging everyday, and his feet would carry him to places that he rarely thought to venture. He found a particularly good bakery on the corner of West & 78th, a wholesale art supplier running a cramped but reasonably priced shop in an alley off Humphrey Street, and various other discoveries that helped to stem the emptiness of a life that no longer held much purpose other than to eat, sleep, and jog.  
  
Yet no matter when or where, be it at home fighting the ghosts of his own mind or while he's out rediscovering life in pieces, he can feel the unmistakable sensation of someone watching him. He's grown used to it, after the first few times of whirling on thin air, waking up to an empty room and scaring the hell out of no one but himself.

Where once it made him disturbed and paranoid, he now felt at peace with it. He accepts it as a companionable presence, since the perpetrator apparently means him no harm, or he'd long since've been aware otherwise. It means, at least, he isn't entirely alone, even if his companion is someone or something he doesn't know at all. Even if his companion might not even be real.

Marco was fully aware that he was being ridiculous and if he was totally honest with himself, borderline psychotic. But if that meant that someone (even if that someone might be a figment of his overactive imagination) thought he was important enough to be around all the time, and he doesn't have to feel alone... then he was okay with that.

He was absolutely okay with that.

* * *

The delicate spring heated up into a blazing summer of sweltering days and humidly cool nights, then faded into the calm crispness of autumn and all its red and golds.

Marco loved autumn, and the colours it brought. Yellow in spring was too floridly bright, the yellow in summer too vividly pastel. But the gold of wheat in harvest time and the amber of the tawny fallen leaves struck him as almost perfect.

Almost.

The weather was great for walks, too. Not too hot, not too cold. He could walk for hours, breathing in the brisk air and savouring the colours that painted his surroundings. It seemed like a lot of people enjoy autumn this year, too, after what appeared to have been a brutally muggy summer. He had to share the paths and pavements with more pedestrians than he cared for.

He figured out how to keep them out of his breathing air how to stop them for jostling for foot-space. He talked to the someone watching him, occasionally in obnoxiously loud volumes just to unnerve the ruder crowds. He looked like he was talking to himself, and more often than not, it felt that way. But every once in a while, as if to reassure him at his peak of embarrassment, he feels a prod in his mind, the sure touch of another being, responding to his monologues.

The looks people give him are so, so worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst part coming soon, in case it wasn't angsty enough already.


	13. The Other Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco finds what he's been looking for his whole life, and Jean loses him all over again.

It happened very quickly, almost too quickly. With cheerful morbidity, Marco thinks he would have rather it happened with excruciating slowness, so he could have analysed and focussed in on each nanosecond as it all unfolded. To have been able to gone over the details of the realisation, the sweet clarity of it, the startling perspicuity of it. The hows, the whys and the what.

The who.

Marco had been taking one of his walks, but there was something different about that day. Autumn was edging towards winter, the crispness of the air turning into a biting chill that stung most common folk into staying at home, where their hearths blazed with a warm fire and their hands were warmed with a mug of some hot beverage. Marco had never been one of the sane, never fully grasped the idea of common sense. He shrugged on his jacket, and laced up his shoes, going for his usual walk all the same. His nose turned red in seconds, and he imagined his ears had done much the same, nipped by the frosty winds blowing from the North.

Despite not having to jostle with people for foot-space that day, he talked aloud nonetheless. He talked about how he will miss autumn, introspecting the reasons why, listing the advantages of winter with a false optimism. He was oblivious to the suspicious and wary stares of other pedestrians, too focussed on waiting for it. Waiting for that nudge against his consciousness, against his presence of mind to inform that yes, he wasn't _wholly insane_. 

He felt nothing. Not for the whole walk, not even a flutter.

Marco would usually feel at least an inkling of acknowledgement, a flicker of assurance once in the entire walk. Now, he felt absolutely nothing.

It scared him in a way that was visceral, curling around the depths of his stomach and impaling him with it. It was like a slap in the face with an icy palm, a difficulty drawing breath because he could not breathe. He can't feel that someone, and he is alone.

He is alone again.

He didn't hear the blaring of car horns, the screech of tires on asphalt. He didn't hear the warning shouts, the screams of terrified shock. He was too wrapped up in waiting for that someone to tell him that he wasn't alone, that he didn't see the truck careening wildly around the corner, and going up on two tires on its side as it plowed straight into him and pinned him to the telephone pole he had stopped in front of.

The pain reverberates through his body: crushed bones, punctured organs, and blood trickling from open wounds he feels all too clearly. And suddenly, he doesn't want to feel.

And it's when he doesn't want to feel, that he does.

A broken gasp, followed by a sharp intake of breath and a cry of anger and pain. It takes a while for him to register through the pain that it's not  _his_. He's not the one making those noises.

His eyes flutter shut, as if blinding himself will blind the pain that threatens to pull him under. It doesn't, but then he can  _see_ it. The eyes that have been watching him, the eyes he has struggled to put down in paint and canvas for years, the eyes that are riddled with a myriad of emotions and none of them good.

_Jean._

The name slips out effortlessly through bloodied lips, and he exhales heavily, not realising that he had been holding his breath.

It was him. All this time, it was him. Jean Kirschstein. 

The stranger cradling him in the nursery, carrying him up to bed in his adolescence, watching over him all his life.

Not a stranger, never a stranger.

And the memories flooded his mind, numbing the pain and keeping the darkness of unconsciousness at bay. Not just memories of this life, of being watched over.

Memories of a life spent lonely and miserable and outcast, memories of making a contract in his own blood, of a stranger who became a friend, of a night that turned them into...

  "Was it..." Marco's voice was shaky, and he choked on his own blood. "Was it true?"

He felt a hand caressing his cheek, a touch that wasn't physically there, but didn't make it any less real. It was tender, and it was familiar. It was Jean, and Marco wants to cry because he was so stupid, so blind. It was always Jean, and he never noticed.

 _You couldn't have,_ and it was Jean's voice. As beautiful as Marco remembered, like amber whiskey on rocks, smooth and brilliant and dizzying.  _You couldn't have remembered._

But that's not what Marco wants to hear.

  "Was it true?

And he knows that Jean knows what he's asking about. He vaguely hears people calling 911, asking him if he's still conscious, but it's like he's hearing it all through a wall. Muffled, indistinct. Only Jean's voice is clear through his hazed mind.

He was talking about that night, that last night they spent together. Intimate, sensual, mutedly painful because Jean wouldn't give him what he needed. He was talking about the words he felt mouthed against his forehead, in his last moments. And Jean knows.

He knows, and he presses his lips to Marco's sweaty, bloody forehead. This time, he doesn't mouth the words. He doesn't silence his feelings, doesn't hide from Marco, who needs him.

All this time, it wasn't life he needed. Marco never needed it.

He needed Jean.

 _It's true,_ Jean whispers, loud enough for Marco to hear.  _I love you_.

Marco smiles weakly, and the darkness swallows him whole.

 


	14. Only Get One Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And here we go again with all the things we did  
> And now I'm wondering, just who would I have been  
> To be the one attached at all time to your hip  
> Forget the things we swore..."  
> -Here We Go Again, by Paramore

Jean pressed his forehead to the cool, flat surface of the obsidian monolith, eyes shut and concentration tuned into the presence within.

The darkness within was all-encompassing, and would have frightened the ordinary soul.

But Marco obviously didn't fit that category, so he drifted aimlessly through the darkness, mildly exasperated, a little nervous and just a dash worried. He'd been there before, and the sequence of events that had followed his time in the crystal had been...bad, to say the least. It was a time he'd rather not repeat, and Jean shared the sentiment wholeheartedly. Which, to think of it, was rather a joke. How could Jean describe feeling a sentiment 'wholeheartedly'? The very question had two faults lying in it as it was.

He refused to pursue that train of thought, choosing instead to observe Marco's goalless wanderings within the void. He did so with great amusement, and with just a touch of rueful affection. He wanted to reach out and establish contact, to cement that their bond was not just some vague notion, some baseless thought that wafted at the peripherals of one's mind. A wonder, a weak suggestion easily dismissed by common sense.

It was real, not quite set, but real.

Marco began to call out his name, his voice tremulous with bemusement.  _Jean?_

He instinctively reached out before he could rein in the urge. He could physically see a spectral, wraith-like version of one of his arms reaching through the dark towards Marco's soul. It was as awe-inspiring as the day Jean first saw it, dwelling in the chest of a defeated, dying young man all those years ago. A little worse for wear, maybe, but still as pure and still intact: a brilliant full moon, wavering with an influx of emotions as though it were partially hidden behind a few errant clouds.

   _I'm here_ , Jean's thoughts held a gentle sort of caress to it.

Marco startled, and his soul immediately  _glowed_. It brightened like the face of a bride when she sees her groom at the altar, like a toddler when he sees his mother at the end of a day at school, like an old man when he sees his grandchildren running to his knees in eager anticipation of his stories. In all his existence, no one had ever regarded Jean with such unadulterated pleasure, such genuine delight. Not since Him, and that had been... that had been lifetimes ago. Nearly forgotten, like a remnant of a dream that faded upon waking. Something too frustrating and troublesome to try and recall, so it was left on the back burner, smouldering like an old grudge.

Jean felt Marco's joy embrace him in a warmth he had not experienced since that last night in Marco's first life, a sensation he hadn't realised till now that he had dearly missed. He felt himself returning the embrace, and Marco's soul was soft and pliant to the touch. Most souls felt like brittle glass, cold and unrepentant, choosing to break rather than bend. Marco's was like a fleece blanket in winter, comfort made real.

   _What's going to happen now?_ Marco asked quietly, after a brief interlude of savouring their reunion. He knew, with unflagging certainty and a pragmatism borne of experience that Jean deeply wished he didn't had to have undergone, that the price of happiness like this was high. He knew it had to be paid. Jean held him tighter, as if he could physically protect him from the consequences of the very action. It was useless, he knew; for every action, there was a reaction. And any,  _every_ action he had committed thus far, had always brought about a negative reprisal.

Much had been taken from him: his grace, power, love, and last but never least, Marco.

Not this time.

His hackles rose as he recognised the familiar muted presence of a powerful existence, just waiting for him to notice. Seeking an audience where Jean would, if it was in his power to do so, otherwise refuse. 

Better to face to consequences now than to delay retribution.

He withdrew, promising Marco that he would not let history repeat itself, that he would see him again.

Jean had never kept a promise not made in blood, not without a collateral or a trade-off. But as Marco had made a difference in his existence, he would make a difference in that trend.

He opened the window between himself and Raphael, and sure enough, the archangel was  _furious._

 _"What have you_ done? _"_ the last word was heavily stressed, laden with the wrath of ten thousand choirs. Raphael's light was blazing, and even as an immortal, Jean flinched at its intensity. " _I would have thought that even_ this  _was beneath one such as you!"_

Jean scowled. "In case you've forgotten, I've already sunk to the bottom. There is nothing left beneath me, Raphael."

  " _This isn't the time for your sarcastic jibes_ ," Raphael fairly snarled. " _The Father is displeased. He demands an explanation, even if He is fully aware of your intentions. He wants to know what you plan to do with that soul."_ _  
_

"Don't," Jean lifted his chin, and his eyes were flinty, belying the calm evenness of his voice. "call him that. He deserves better."

  " _And I suppose you're going to give him that_ ," there was a mild but blatant show of a sneer in Raphael's reply. " _Noble and merciful as you are known to be._ " _  
_

"I would have you shut up, Raphael," Jean growled. "That is what I would do foremost. What I do with Marco's soul is my prerogative, not yours, not His. It was since his first life, and it should have been. Your interference instigated mine, so lay not the blame at my door."

Raphael heaved a sigh, a great gusty one. When he spoke again, he was much more serene. Kinder, even. " _What do you plan on doing with the soul of Marco Bodt?"_ _  
_

Jean clenched his many fists, as if he could physically rein in the vitriol he wanted to spill on the archangel. "If I tell you, will you leave us alone?"

The archangel hesitated, and his countenance was grave. " _It would depend--_ "

  "Will you?" Jean wasn't taking any uncertainties for an answer. Not this time. Not where Marco was concerned.

The angel sighed once more, this time with exasperation. " _You know I cannot speak for Him_."

  "But you can speak on behalf of yourself, of the other angels, right?" Jean narrowed his eyes. Whatever command the Father gave, if the angels were bound to his promise with Jean, they could not act on it.

The angel closed his eyes. " _Yes, I can, and I will. What do you plan to do with the soul of Marco Bodt?"_

Jean, with that promise now in hand, could be honest. He looked up at Raphael with the truth in his eyes, warring against his nature.

  "I don't know."

* * *

 

 _And here we go again_ , Marco mused, pursuing the relentless void with the same determination as a one-month old pup pursues its own tail, fascinated and with endless curiosity.  _No place quite like isolation cell_.

Marco was no fool to this place, and he was no fool to what was likely to occur. Another 'chance', another 'life', most probably.

Well, they could put those 'mercies' where the sun didn't shine, as far as Marco was concerned. He'd had his taste of reincarnation, and it was bitter. The only high point was finding Jean again, after years of searching for something he didn't know of. It was like looking for a limb you could feel but wasn't there, a phantom appendage, only to find that it was connected to your body right before you die.

Not a very good analogy, but Marco wasn't one for literature or poetic observations.

He was tired. So tired. Tired of feeling, of being. Of waiting for a dream that he would never have again. He wished they would just condemn him to Hell, because even if it meant pain, it would mean being near Jean. Not some 'gift' of a second chance and a human life of wasting away. He just wanted to be with Jean.

But maybe that was too much to ask for. Jean being what or who he was, and Marco being... Marco. Just Marco.

He didn't know how long he'd been drifting in the void, his mind going back and forth between elation of finding Jean again, and the grief of knowing that that elation wouldn't last long. His emotions battered him around like he was some kind of softball, and each strike wore the leather thinner.

When Jean returned, he almost keeled over in a dizzy cocktail of joy and worry and bitter understanding. It was the first time Jean had met him a second time in this void. He had never returned, but this was new. It could be a good new, or a bad new, and honestly, Marco was afraid to find out.

   _Hey,_ Jean murmured softly, and Marco revelled in the Jean's touch as it embraced him again. He knew it wasn't physically real, but it was firm and sure and he felt safe.  _I'm back._

 _Wasn't sure you'd be_ , Marco mumbled.

Jean chuckled, then sobered quickly. Marco didn't like it, and when Jean spoke again, he tensed.

   _Marco,_ Jean whispered.  _If I asked you a question, would you answer me honestly?_

Marco didn't hesitate. _Yes_.

Jean smiled, but it was a sad one, and Marco didn't have long to wonder why before Jean spoke again.

_What would you say if I asked you to be with me for all eternity?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't you just LOVE cliffhangers?


	15. Broken Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I had a dream the other night  
> About how we only get one life  
> Woke me up right after two  
> Stayed awake and stared at you  
> So I wouldn't lose my mind."  
> -Something I Need, by OneRepublic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, my loves. This is where we say goodbye.

   _Yes_.

Marco didn't even blink, didn't have to think about it. It was a yes, and it always would be.

Jean had become everything, everyone to him. He was the very first to  _want_ to keep Marco around, when no one else had. Not his parents, not his friends, not his ex-wife and not even his daughter. No one had thought he was important enough to have in their lives for just a few years, and here Jean wanted him for _eternity_.

Jean wanted  _him,_ and that was reason enough for Marco to say yes by itself.

He felt himself shudder with exultation at the realisation that it was real, not some fantasy concocted in the delusions of his own mind. Jean loved him, and he wanted him, not just for now but for all eternity. He reached out for Jean, soul yearning for the touch to reassure his beliefs, to provide solid grounding for his reasoning. He felt the gentle graze against what he imagined to be his face, from what he assumed to be Jean's fingertips. It felt similar to a cat's paw pads, warm and firm with a slight give to it, just a little rough in the texture. And it was just as comforting.

   _Thank you_ , Jean's words were slightly shaky, like his breathing was shuddering with emotions he could barely keep in check.  _Thank you, Marco_.

They stayed liked that for who knows how long, since the passage of time was unheard of and unchecked in the realms of Hell. Marco didn't care-- he was with Jean, and they were on the same page, and that was really all that mattered. But common sense, as always, was a nemesis that liked to rear its ugly head where and when it wasn't wanted most.

   _Now what_ _?_ Marco murmured, not entirely sure he wanted an answer.

Jean didn't speak, and Marco counted 26 elephants before he responded.  _I only know what's_ not  _going to happen._

He shifted, and Marco could feel his determination solidifying, and it was a wonderful thing. It was like watching the sunrise, feeling the warmth of a new day, a promise of something better, the thrilling potential of it. It was like a real, genuine second chance with love on your side, by your side. Not some rehab cheap shot at starting over, bound by unseen restraints against crossing the line.

   _I'm never letting you go_ , Jean stroked Marco's soul, and the way he said it... it calmed Marco's unease. _That much I can swear to you._

   _And that's all I'll ever need,_ Marco whispered.

The darkness never seemed more beautiful to Marco in that moment, wrapped around them like a veil, shielding them from the forces that awaited them. And they sank into the throes of it, letting tendrils of it creep up around them and draw them into its depths. Marco felt like he was sinking into the ocean, except he could breathe, and he was fairly certain the only reason he could was because Jean was cradling him, with him. He could feel Jean's tawny ochre eyes watching him, searching for any hint of rejection or refusal, and finding none at all. Why would he?

   _I've spent a lifetime searching for you,_ Marco felt his consciousness tunnel dark, the void claiming him with Jean's warm embrace his focal point to stay awake.  _I won't let you go anytime soon, either. I love you._

He gave up the fight, and the darkness blanketed him gently, as death once did that lifetime ago, with the dawn breaking beyond the window and Jean's lips against his forehead.

   _I love you_.

* * *

_Beep, beep, beep, beep._

The steady, rhythmic noise of electronic equipment functioning grated at Marco's lethargic senses as he clawed his way back to consciousness. Bright light assailed his eyes, making him squint to shutter it out to a bearable level. His fingers informed him that he was lying atop scratchy sheets, and an unforgiving mattress that made his back ache. His nose picked up on the piercing smell of industrial disinfectant, and he groaned. His mouth was dry and sandy, like he'd just swallowed a desert.

To summarize, he was in a hospital, and he felt like he'd been scraped off the bottom of someone's coffee mug. Bascially,  _crap_.

Just when he thought it couldn't get worse, the pain came pounding in, following closely on the heels of awareness. Relentlessly, like the waves of some turbulent ocean in the midst of a storm, reminding Marco that there was a very good reason why he was where he was. He struggled for attention, the pain swallowing him whole and drowning him. His chest heaved, and he spluttered, choking for help.

Something clattered in his close vicinity, a chair scraping back, and he could vaguely hear someone calling for the doctor.

People crowded into his room, and someone injected a substance into his IV drip. He watched blearily, distractedly fending off the pain, as it conveyed itself through the transparent tube into his circulatory system.

He went under again, and gratefully when it made the pain recede.

* * *

 

When he woke the second time, he was on a much softer mattress, a poster bed, even. Thick russet drapes hung over it, and the sheets had a much silkier quality to it. The air smelled like honeysuckle and bread rising. The lighting was warmer, gentler on the eyes, with fading late afternoon sunlight pouring in through balcony doors.

Jean was standing at the balcony doors, backlit by the golden light of the setting sun. It set his profile aglow, highlighting the paleness of his skin, his ashy-blond hair, contrasting it with the darker brown of his closer-shorn mane. His face was cast in shadows, and he was looking at something he rolled between his hands. Marco couldn't catch a glimpse of it, but when he moved to sit upright, Jean looked up.

It took Marco's breath away, to see the sunlight catching on the chiselled planes of Jean's face, turning the pale amber of his eyes into a brilliant shade of carefully aged whiskey. Even more so, the smile that seemed to bring a warmth to those eyes. It was a beautiful, beautiful sight that demanded to be put down in paint, to be treasured through centuries.

This was the one they hailed the Devil, wickedness and cruelty incarnate, borne of the rage of a fallen angel. The one they believed to have horns, a pitchfork, red skin and a tail, or the legs of a goat and eyes of Hell. The one meant to bring about the end of humanity, the downfall of mankind. Vicious, tyrannical, monstrous, atrocious. Evil made manifest.

Yet all Marco saw was a man in love. And he loved, oh, how he loved.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Jean beat him to it.

  " _Wake up, sweetheart_ ," Jean said, and his voice had a blurry quality to it, like Marco was hearing him through a wall of water.

All too soon, he noticed the strange, dream-like quality of it all. The indistinct lines of the poster bed, the hazy swirling pattern of the duvet, and Jean's eyes were filled with a kind of wistful sadness.

  "Wh...what?" Marco reached out for Jean, who didn't approach.

  " _I need you to wake up_ ," Jean repeated, a little more forcefully.

And Marco fell backwards onto feather-soft pillows, confused and his vision blurring dangerously. So the darkness blinded him once more.

* * *

 

The third and final time, he was roused to awareness in the hospital once more. There was no annoying beeping machinery anymore, no cannulas sneaking oxygen into his nasal cavities, no wires holding him down to track his vitals. He was groggy and a little disoriented, but this was reality.

The pain told him as much, aching and pounding and even burning somewhat, and it was mostly concentrated to the right portion of his body. He glanced over to see what hurt so much, and inhaled so quickly, he might've whistled.

His arm was missing from a little past the shoulder down, the socket where the joint of his shoulder formerly resided wrapped in layers of stained gauze.

   _Okay_ , Marco thought faintly, edging towards panic.  _Okay. My arm's missing. My_ arm  _is_ gone _._

His breathing became short and uneven, and he was about to hyperventilate himself into a full-blown panic attack when his roaming gaze caught on a figure huddled up on a chair near the door.

A tuft of ashy-blond hair stuck out from under a red knit beanie, and the rest of the figure was covered in a hospital blanket, concealing the person's identity. Every once in a while, a soft snore rose from the pile. Lithe, long legs clad in dark jeans stretched out from under the figure, and heavy combat boots covered the feet of what was most likely a guy, given their size.

Marco knew, without a moment's hesitation or doubt, that it was Jean.

It took a while for him to summon his voice, to remember how speech worked, particularly in the midst of fighting off a near panic-attack, but he did. "Jean."

His voice was horribly scratchy, like a damaged vinyl record on a gramophone. It hurt his throat to talk, too. But soft and guttural as his call had been, the person hiding under the blanket in deep sleep had heard him. Probably had been waiting for him, if his appearance was anything to go on.

The blanket fell to the floor in a puddle of scratchy material, and Marco wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Jean looked  _terrible_.

His beanie was askew, his hair all over the place, and there were dark shadows under his eyes. His joints creaked when he tried to right his position before he fell out of the chair, and his shirt was all wrinkly. He'd obviously been there awhile, and clearly gone without sleep for most of that time. There were lines creasing the corners of his mouth, a sure sign of troubled worry.

  "Hey," Jean murmured, sounding just as terrible as he looked. He fought off a yawn, and stretched before getting up to go over to Marco's side. His gait was a little stiff, but as wolf-like as Marco remembered. "How're you feeling?"

A multitude of questions demanded to escape Marco's lips, but the one that did left him feeling oddly stupid. "Are you okay?"

Jean burst out laughing. "Why are you asking me that?"

  "You look exhausted," Marco replied sheepishly.

  "I am," Jean finally stopped laughing, enough to smile and palm Marco's cheek. "But are _you_ okay?"

Marco grimaced, gesturing to his missing right arm. It was so easy to be candid and calm about it when Jean was here with him, so easy to take it in stride.

  "That had to go," Jean explained. "The injuries were too extensive. It was either that or you be left with a pathetic excuse of an arm that would look more like a twisted version of a tree branch."

Definitely easy.

  "I didn't get a say in it," Marco pointed out.

  "Anaesthetics will do that for you," Jean shrugged, and he stroked Marco's hair, threading his fingers through his tresses. It felt insanely good. "Otherwise, how're you feeling?"

Marco raised both eyebrows, silently asking the most obvious questions.  _What happened? Why are you here? Where am I?_ When  _am I?_

Jean took a deep breath. "Remember when you were hit by that truck?"

Marco nodded.

  "Yeah, they managed to revive you," Jean thumbed Marco's temple, expression a little distant, a little pained. "It was a long, ugly process of trying to keep you alive, but hey. You were out cold for a week--" "A week?!" "--and the doctors weren't even sure you could make it."

  "So... this is the lifetime with Mina and Marie and the whole painting thing, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "What happened to you?" Marco asked softly, when it became clear that Jean wasn't going to answer that particular question.

A heartbeat, two, of silence passed. Jean exhaled.

  "After you... lost consciousness, I took your soul," Jean explained quietly, countenance as sombre as the grave Marco had so narrowly avoided. "I wrangled out a deal with Him. I couldn't keep your soul with me in Hell, not without divine retribution. The Father pointed out that I had developed a... human side to my nature, and it was affecting the execution of my proper duties. He wanted me to be rid of it, so that's why he gave you a second chance to take you away from me."

  "But it didn't go away," Marco gently supplied when Jean didn't continue.

  "Yes," Jean said heavily. "It didn't. I kept watch over you for all your second life, and that was probably what inspired you to feel like you were missing something. Missing  _me_. The higher powers got upset, tried to interfere and I took my eyes off you for all of _one_ second, and you get hit by a vehicle. So after I took your soul, He wanted to cut me a deal. Permanently."

  "What kind of deal?" Marco murmured, somewhat fearful.

  "I had to split my existence," Jean replied softly. "Cut my human side off, and manifest in it as a separate identity. In return, you would live, and we could spend a human life together. Whatever comes after... just will."

Marco stared at Jean, absorbing his words and what they meant.

Now that he looked again, Jean was missing that... otherworldly aura of confidence and power. He looked more human, more like he was living in his skin, rather than as if he were wearing it for the sake of wearing it.

  "I have a heartbeat, too," Jean smiled crookedly, lifting Marco's hand to the spot at the centre of his chest.

Marco inhaled a shuddery breath, overwhelmed with a flood of emotions and tears stinging his eyes as he  _felt_. The sure, steady beat of Jean's heart, an assurance, a certainty of how real this was.

  "You did this... for me?" Marco looked up, tears threatening to spill over and damn it, he could care less if they did.

  "I did this for  _me_ ," Jean grinned. "Purely selfish motive, I assure you. But this means no teleporting halfway across the world or snazzy hotels. My current identity is a thirty-year old French-Canadian male, with no medical history whatsoever and a driver's license declaring as much. I don't have an occupation, but I do feel like I'd be very good at sculpting if I tried my hand--"

Marco cut him off by throwing his only arm around Jean's shoulders and kissing him hard and clumsily, but with fervent passion.

  "Was this what you wanted?" Jean whispered against Marco's lips when they parted just enough to breathe again.

Marco felt giddy delight bubbling like champagne fizz in his chest, blotting out the pain and everything else but this moment,  _this_.

  "It's what I needed."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one wild ride that started months ago, and I'm glad you've stuck with me all the way through it, miserable little shit that I am.


End file.
